Scotland is a castle lover’s wonderland. Over 2,500 castles still stand across the country in every style imaginable, from vast royal strongholds crowning volcanic crags to slender towerhouses nestled among rolling hills. They are as synonymous with Scotland as bagpipes and shortbread – indeed, iconic castles like Eilean Donan decorate the lids of many a biscuit tin!
Where and when did Scotland’s first castles emerge? Who were their builders and destroyers? How did they actually function in times of peace and war, and what forces brought about the end of the castle age? Read on for a crash course in Scottish castellated history.
What is a castle?
At the most fundamental level, a castle is a fortified residence of the royalty or nobility built during the Middle Ages. They are most often, but not always, products of feudalism. Most scholars agree that the earliest castles in Scotland were built in the late 11th century AD, and that the socio-political systems which they were part of had largely disappeared by the early 17th century.
Fighting was only one part of castles’ function. The vast majority could only hold out against raids and low-level warfare. All but the mightiest would fall quickly and fairly easily to a large, determined army, and Hollywood-style assaults with siege ladders and battering rams were exceptionally rare. Still, castles were at the centre of every major military campaign in Scotland in the Middle Ages.
A castle must also function as a home, with everything needed to support an extended household. That means a great hall for dining and feasting guests, kitchens, bakehouses, breweries, stables, smiths, and support system of farming and services around it. Many castles had villages develop around them if there wasn’t one already.
To sum up, if it was built between the late 11th and early 17th centuries with some potential for defence but also for domestic living, I’m happy to call it a castle. If it’s all fighting and no homemaking, it’s a fort; if it has castle-like architectural features but no practical means of being defended, it’s probably a country house, palace, or folly.
Scotland’s first castles
Two quite distinct castle types compete for the title of Scotland’s oldest. The best-known are motte-and-bailey castles, timber castles built atop earthen mounds (motta in Latin) introduced by knights from areas like Normandy in mainland Europe. Around 300 have been identified in Scotland. On average, a team of 50 labourers could raise a basic motte-and-bailey castle in around 40 days.
Many motte-and-bailey castles were built on the contested fringes of the Scottish kingdom. Kings like David I (r.1123-1153AD) invited European knights to build them and then hold them against rivals like the Earldom of Orkney in the north and Galloway in the southwest. John of Fordun, a 14th century chronicler, wrote of David I that, “He it is that decked thee [Scotland] with castles and towns, and with lofty towers.”
Duffus Castle in Moray is one of the best surviving examples. Built by the Flemish knight Hugh de Freskin, its wide-topped bailey had secondary buildings with the defensive tower capping the higher motte. Duffus was rebuilt in stone during Edward I’s campaigns in the late 13th through early 14th centuries, but the weight of the masonry proved too much and it collapsed into partial ruins. Other notable examples include the Bass of Inverurie, the Motte of Urr, and Hawick Motte.
Around the same time, the Norse settlers in places like Orkney and Argyll raised castles of their own outside the feudal system. Norse seafarers raiding throughout Europe encountered early castles and clearly wanted some of their own. Norsemen even went on crusade to the Holy Land, no doubt marvelling at the fortifications there.
Their castles were built in stone from the start. Castle Sween, for instance, originates from around 1100AD and was built by Suibhne (Sween) to monitor the sea-highways of the west coast. It is a prime example of a ‘galley-castle’, one built to prioritise quick access to longboats. Other examples include Cubbie Roo’s Castle, Skipness Castle, and Kisimul Castle.
The ‘Golden Age’ of Scottish castles
Large castles are best built in times of peace and plenty, not war and scarcity. The 12th and 13th centuries in Scotland brought a favourable climate and, in relative terms, amicable relations with England, giving Scottish lairds breathing room for castle-building. No longer were a flurry of timber castles being raised upon the kingdom’s fringe – greater beasts were now stirring,
Builders again took inspiration from France, where mighty round towers called donjons formed the nucleus of many castles. Such towers became the centrepieces of Scottish baronial castles like Dirleton and Bothwell. Many of the defining features of castles as we think of them took shape in this period: dry and wet moats, curtain walls, wall-walks with crenellations, and enclosed courtyards.
Two types of stone castles emerged and evolved during this ‘Golden Age’. Royal castles from c.1200AD like Stirling and Edinburgh served as fixed centres for administration and justice for the kingdom writ large. Baronial castles built by ascendant families like the Douglases, Stewarts, and Murrays were like mini-kingdoms unto themselves. Such families typically used one as their caput or main castle with several others scattered throughout their lands.
This is the period that gave us many peoples’ favourite castles, including the likes of Caerlaverock with its triangular form and picture-perfect moat, Dunnottar Castle on its nigh-impregnable promontory, and Urquhart Castle astride Loch Ness.
All, however, fell to Edward I’s invasions, failing their first major test on a national scale. Majestic as symbol of power they may be, but as keepers of the kingdom they proved surprisingly fallible. This prompted a major re-think.
Late medieval castles: build up, not out
By the 15th century more and more nobles contented themselves with more modest builds. The climate had turned wetter and colder, plague wrought its ruin, and time and time again the big baronial castles fell into enemy hands. What’s a status-obsessed aristocrat to do?
While royal castles became increasingly palace-like in true Renaissance style, hundreds of towerhouses rose up across Scotland. These slender, multi-storey castles were not nearly as big an investment and did the job just as well. In an age when the king’s power was outstripping that of even the mightiest noble and when gunpowder weapons became capable of blasting through the thickest walls, they were an ideal compromise.
Towerhouses could stand up against raids from rival clans but were never intended to halt armies. They rose higher than any castle buildings before them – a very notable feature of Scottish castles is their tendency to ‘build up’ and not ‘build out’. Excellent examples of towerhouses include Preston Tower, Fairburn Tower, Alloa Tower, and Castle Stalker.
There were holdouts. Tantallon Castle in East Lothian is regarded as the last great curtain-walled castle in Scotland. It’s effectively one giant wall cutting off a promontory. Built by the Douglases in the mid-14th century, it resisted two separate large-scale sieges by the King of Scots (no less) but fell quickly to Cromwell’s cannons in the mid-17th century.
The end of the castle age
By the early 1600s several factors conspired to bring the age of castles to a longwinded end. The increasing centralisation of power in the crown, advanced artillery, the Union of the Crowns in 1603, the transition of feudalism into early modernity, and changing fashions all played their part.
In 1677 the Earl of Strathmore summed up this shift in preference: “Who can delight to live in his house as in a prison? Such houses truly are worn quyt out of fashion, as feuds are … the countrie being generally more civilized than it was.”
Many castles, like Callendar House and Fyvie Castle, built grand new modern-style residential wings around their old towers, turning a once martial and stark structure into a luxurious country house. Large windows, decorative turrets, walled gardens, and other ornate features were added with abandon, and some castle owners outright abandoned their old towers to begin anew.
With all that said, it’s important to bear in mind that these were not tidy, abrupt divisions. Timber castles persisted long into the High Middle Ages, many older courtyard castles simply added towerhouses and kept on going, and even the oldest and staunchest castles always had “unnecessary” decorative features as markers of status. Even today, castles like Stoneypath Tower and Kilmartin Castle are being sympathetically restored as residences to their late medieval grandeur. Indeed, you could view the restoration of many castles in the 19th and 20th centuries for tourism as just the latest phase in their lifespan.
Finally, it is easy to look back and see them as the products of grand masterplans and of past peoples unrecognisable from ourselves. To that end, here is one of my favourite inscriptions from any Scottish castle. It adorned the entrance to Pinkie House in Musselburgh, rebuilt by Alexander Seaton around the ruins of an old castle destroyed during the Rough Wooing of the 1540s.
It reads: “Alexander, Lord Seton, built this house in 1613, not as he would have wished, but according to the measure of his means and estate.” Don’t we all!
Text and images: David C. Weinczok.
Main photo: Smailholm Tower.