Blackness Castle, West Lothian

Posted on 11 September 2023 by Katrina

Blackness Castle sticks out into the River Forth, as you can see, it was apparently designed to look like a ship. You actually have to walk over a wee drawbridge to get on to this wooden walkway.

It’s a couple of weeks since we visited Blackness Castle, it’s not far from Bo’ness in West Lothian, it might be in Falkirk District now, they keep changing things! It’s one of the many places that was used as a location for Outlander, they had to cover the metal handrails with wooden panelling. It was also used in the filming of The Bruce, Zeffirelli’s Hamlet, Starz (?) Doomsday and Ivanhoe. Blackness was built in the 15th century.

Anyway, it’s not that far from where we live and possibly for that reason we just didn’t get around to visiting it until years after reading about the castle. For some reason I didn’t think it would be a very interesting castle – but it was. As usual there are a lot of spiral staircases involved.

It’s a long way up to the top.

In the distance you can just see the Forth Bridges below. As ever, if you click on the photos you should be able to see them enlarged. Tomorrow I’ll show some photos of inside the castle.

Tantallon Castle, near North Berwick, East Lothian

Posted on 6 September 2023 by Katrina

Tantallon Castle, near North Berwick in East Lothian, is yet another ruin, but what a ruin it is, and what a great location!

As you can see there’s a fine view of the Bass Rock from the castle. This rock was used as a place to dump prisoners back in the day. With a sea crossing over notoriously rough waters to make if you tried to get off it it was in effect not escapable. Nowadays it’s a haven for seabirds.

As you can see from the photo below taken from the castle’s top floor it’s a long way up – or down, and there are parts of the castle which have been sectioned off as they’re deemed too unsafe for the public at the moment. There are a lot of spiral staircases involved but we were determined to see the whole place.

In the photo below Jack is surveying the walls, it’s definitely beyond his DIY skills!

Let’s look through the arched window. That takes me back!

Tantallon may look a bit grim now but as you can see from all the fireplaces below, it must have been quite cosy in its heyday. Just imagine the walls with tapestries on them and a flickering fire.

There was a harbour and ships came in loaded with whatever was needed to make life comfortable, and presumably guests also could arrive that way.

It was a bit blustery up there to say the least, but look at the fantastic colour of that orange lichen on the stonework, it’s obviously in its element!

Tantallon Castle is definitely worth a visit if you’re interested in history or like castles. It’s run by Historic Scotland.

Tolquhon Castle, Aberdeenshire, Scotland

Posted on 1 September 2019 by Katrina

Earlier in August we were in Aberdeenshire – for one night only, but we managed to fit a lot in as usual and Tolquhon Castle near Ellon was one of the places we visited. It was built in 1580 and although it’s now a ruin it’s well worth visiting, it’s easy to imagine how elegant and luxurious it must have been in its heyday. It’s thought there were earlier structures here around the 1200s.

Originally built for the Forbes family it was eventually sold in 1716 as the then laird had lost most of his money in the disastrous Darien Scheme.

Although it’s a ruin there’s still lots to see and loads of spiral staircases to climb up and descend, always more difficult coming down – and slightly scary!

The very narrow stairs in the photo below lead up to the highest point of the castle, a teeny wee room. These rooms are always my favourite part of castles as they would have been used mainly by the owners, probably the lady of the castle – a great place to read or just get away from it all, although this one only has one small window and there’s nowhere to sit outside on the walls – as other castles often have.

As you can see below it’s dark in there so maybe it was used for assignations!

Below is the only straight and wide bit of the many staircases and must have been a later construction I think, built after the castle was used mainly as a home rather than a place of defence.

You get a good view from the top, but I was really interested in the two white bulls in the field below – well I think they were some variety of bull as there was nothing else in the field but they seemed placid.

Castles are all very well, but most of us would have been living in a wee cottage way back then, if we were lucky to have one, and I would have been happy in one of these cute wee ones at the entrance to the castle. One of them is now a visitor centre. What about you – castle or cottage?

Glenluce Abbey, Dumfries and Galloway

Posted on 1 July 2018 by Katrina

One of the many historical places we visited when we were in south west Scotland in Dumfries and Galloway recently was Glenluce Abbey – yes, yet another ruin! It was founded around 1192 it’s thought, and was a daughter abbey to Dundrennan Abbey, so it was a Cistercian abbey peopled by monks who wore white robes.

After the Reformation in 1560 the monks embraced the new religion and were allowed to live out their lives in the abbey with the last one dying in 1602. Like most of these places when they were no longer used the people living locally used the place as a handy quarry, an easy place to go and purloin some nice stone for whatever domestic project they had on hand.

The windows in the photo below have obviously been fairly recently restored.

Quite often you can see quite fancy stones in the walls of local cottages near such ruins which were clearly taken from a much more important building.

There’s a very sweet and dainty looking type of wee fern-like plant, but it has lilac flowers, which has very happily set up home in lots of the abbey stonework.

The one below has settled in what must have been a small shuttered window, but the shutter is long gone.

And below is a very narrow but tall building which was for the use of the abbot. Inside it’s just one teeny wee room, about five feet wide I think. There must have been two or three storeys to it originally but the floors have gone and the abbott must have used a ladder to get up there as there’s no room for any stairs. The height and narrowness of it makes it look very French to me. Sadly it wasn’t possible to get a photo of the front of that building because of the overhanging trees. It looks perfect to me, it would make a wonderful folly if you were lucky enough to have a big enough garden for it!

Pining for the West

Meanderings about recipes, books, craft and more

Tag Archives: Historic Environment Scotland

Blackness Castle, West Lothian

Tantallon Castle, near North Berwick, East Lothian

Tolquhon Castle, Aberdeenshire, Scotland

Glenluce Abbey, Dumfries and Galloway