|
With some coworkers in town from Houston we thought it would be a good weekend to check out the local castles. Aberdeen is a great city because it right on the door step of the Scottish Highlands, mountain, the Whiskey Trail, and lots of castles. We set out in Cassandra and Ramsay’s little hatchback crammed with the 5 of us. First stop was the ruins of Slains Castle which was supposed to be the inspiration for Bram Stoker when he created Dracula. Sounded interesting enough. You have to remember in Scotland that most of the roads are little two lane things...... if you are luckily. Seemed like each turn we took the roads kept getting smaller and smaller, till the final road to the castle which was a 4x4 road. Nothing our Vauxhall couldn’t handle. We got excited when we could see the North Sea because the castle was supposed to sit right on the cliff........ and when we got there it was pretty disappointing. The “castle” sat in the front driveway of someone’s house and all that was left was half a wall. It seemed really weird because when I looked it up on the internet it looked really big. Something seemed really weird. UPDATE: when I got home I looked on the internet and found out we went to the wrong Slains Castle. Here is an bit from a website I found:
There are, confusingly, two Slains Castles on this stretch of coast. The original lay a mile north east of Collieston and about six miles south west of its successor. This was built in the 1200s as a fortress. But in 1594 the owner, the Earl of Erroll backed a plot by the Earl of Huntly against King James VI. James responded by blowing up Old Slains Castle, and not much remains today.
The Earl of Erroll returned from exile in 1597 and made his peace with James. Rather than try to rebuild Slains, he instead used a tower house at Bowness as the basis for a new Slains Castle. The tower was extended and ranges of buildings were added around a courtyard.
In 1664 the castle was again expanded and altered, and a corridor was built across the courtyard. The final major change came in 1836 when further wings were added and the underlying castle was given a granite facing and generally Disneyfied.
Building costs and high living did little for the family finances and in 1916 death duties forced the 20th Earl of Erroll to sell Slains Castle. The new owner allowed the castle to fall into disrepair, and in 1925 its roof was removed.
Slains Castle today is a slightly unsettling place. It comes as little surprise to discover that Bram Stoker, who stayed at the castle, used it as inspiration for his story of Dracula. Earlier distinguished visitors included Johnson and Boswell who stayed here in 1773 and noted that "the walls of one of the towers seemed only to be a continuation of the perpendicular rock the foot of which is beaten by the waves".
And they still do: the front of the castle lies literally along the edge of the cliffs, while its rear, beyond what were once its gardens, is protected from unwanted guests by a deep cleft that cuts into the cliffs as far as the main access road. Internally, the castle is a collection of mostly brick-built intersecting corridors wrapped around rooms now deeply carpeted in nettles. In the heart of the castle is the courtyard, though it takes some time to work out which were outside areas in the original design and which were inside.
Slain's general air of creepiness is not helped by the vaulted room accessed down a muddy slide that was probably once a kitchen store complete with large stone storage bins all the way around the walls. Unless (as you begin to wonder as you peer round in the near total darkness) it was some sort of crypt.
Most castle ruins in Scotland are well cared for, often by Historic Scotland. Most are carefully maintained as ruins and come complete with interpretation boards, mown grass, and consolidated walls. Slains Castle is distinctly different. You'd be hard pressed to call it attractive, even on the brightest of days, but is is most certainly interesting. This is what happens to ruins when nature has just been left to get on with it.
And if you are on your own, with the only sounds the crashing of the waves on the rocks below and the cry of the many gulls, then Slains Castle really can begin to play on the imagination...
Here is the link with pictures from where we were trying to go
Well with that disappointment out of the way we head to our next destination, Tolquhoun Castle. This was another ruin, but it is upkept by the Historic Scotland Society. Tolquhoun was established in 1420 when the tower was built and the rest of the castle was completed in 1584.
The final castle of the day wasn’t really a castle, but a house. Haddo House to be exact. Not really sure why it was built, but it was pretty cool none the less. I took a pretty cool panoramic of Haddo House. The rest of the pictures are below.
|
