We had to have two goes at visiting Kildrummy Castle when we were in Aberdeenshire for a few days in August. The first time we tried to go there it was shut, normally as it’s a ruin you would have been able just to wander around it after hours, but for some reason we weren’t allowed to do that at this castle. It dates from the 1200s so I suppose it can be forgiven for being a ruin.

The castle was originally the seat of the Earl of Mar but over the years it has been under siege several times and so has changed hands, it’s thought that the English King Edward I took it over at some point.

You can’t really tell from what is left of the building but the design of it was similar to French castles, as so many Scottish castles are, they looked to France and Italy for inspiration and obviously didn’t want to be like English castles.

Certainly Kildrummy was inhabited by some of the Bruce family, including Robert’s brother and sister, but its downfall came much later than that at 1716 after the failure of the Jacobite ‘rebellion’ the previous year. Obviously the then owners backed the wrong side!

The information boards give you some idea of how the place would have looked in its heyday. The one below shows the Snow Tower which was the castle keep, one of the tallest buildings of its time.

As you can see from the photo of a model below, it was quite elegant in its day. Even although it’s a ruin it’s still worth seeing.