Aberdour Castle: A Medieval and Renaissance Noble Residence in Scotland
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Kingdom of Scotland
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page18 sections
History
Aberdour Castle is a medieval and Renaissance castle in Aberdour, United Kingdom, developed by Scottish noble families from around 1200. It is one of Scotland’s two oldest datable standing castles, alongside Castle Sween. The castle began as a hall house overlooking the Dour Burn and later became a tower house, a vertically organized fortified residence, before the Douglas Earls of Morton expanded it into a substantial residence.
Origins and medieval lordship
The barony of Aberdour, a territorial jurisdiction held by a noble family, came to Sir Alan de Mortimer in 1126 through his marriage to Anicea, daughter of Sir John de Vipont. The Mortimers probably built the original hall house around 1200, or possibly earlier. Its principal hall was likely raised above service or storage areas, creating a residence suited to the administration of the surrounding lands. Sir Alan also built St Fillan’s Church beside the castle around 1140.
In the early fourteenth century, Robert the Bruce, King of Scots from 1306 to 1329, granted Aberdour to his kinsman Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray. Moray’s grandson granted the barony to Sir William Douglas of Liddesdale in 1342. In 1351, Sir William gave the lands of Aberdour to his nephew, Sir James Douglas of Dalkeith, while retaining the castle until his death in 1353. King David II confirmed the grant in 1361.
Aberdour and Dalkeith were combined into a single barony in 1386. Dalkeith became the principal seat, while Aberdour served as a secondary residence. The change nevertheless brought the castle into the estates of the Douglas family, whose political and financial fortunes shaped its later expansion.
The Douglas Earls of Morton
James, fourth Lord Dalkeith, became Earl of Morton in 1458 and enlarged the existing hall house. Around 1500, the second Earl added a stair tower and a south block. During the fifteenth century, the earlier residence was also converted into a tower house, giving the castle a more vertical and defensible form.
The sixteenth century brought repeated royal intervention in the ownership and control of Aberdour. James V summoned the third Earl of Morton over unpaid feudal dues in 1538 and exiled him to Inverness in 1540. The king temporarily transferred Morton’s lands to Robert Douglas of Lochleven. After James V died in 1542, George Douglas of Pittendreich and the Earl of Arran helped Morton recover Aberdour.
James Douglas, George Douglas’s son, married Morton’s heiress, Elizabeth, and became the fourth Earl of Morton in 1553. Aberdour was reserved for Morton’s mother-in-law, Katherine Stewart, Dowager Countess of Morton, until 1564. In that year, Mary, Queen of Scots, confirmed Morton’s rights over the barony of Dalkeith and Aberdour.
The fourth Earl became involved in the 1566 rebellion against Mary, Queen of Scots, which was associated with the murder of her secretary, David Riccio. Morton later became Regent of Scotland in 1572, governing for the young James VI. During the 1570s he extended Aberdour Castle and laid out its terraced gardens. The Privy Council, a senior body that advised the monarch and carried out governmental and judicial functions, met at the castle in August 1576.
Morton’s regency ended in 1578. He was later implicated in the 1567 murder of Mary’s husband, Lord Darnley, and James VI ordered his execution in 1581. His lands passed temporarily to Archibald Douglas, eighth Earl of Angus, and then to the Earl of Lennox before returning to Angus in 1587. After Angus died in 1588, the title passed to William Douglas of Lochleven.
William Douglas’s son died before him, but the son’s widow, Jean Lyon, continued to live at Aberdour with her husband, Alexander Lindsay, Lord Spynie. James VI and Anne of Denmark stayed with Lord Spynie at Aberdour for five days in December 1590.
Seventeenth-century residence
William Douglas, seventh Earl of Morton, sometimes numbered as the sixth Earl, inherited Aberdour in 1606. He served as Treasurer of Scotland from 1630 to 1636 and supported the Stewart dynasty during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, a series of connected conflicts in Scotland, England, and Ireland between 1639 and 1651. Financial pressure led him to sell Dalkeith in 1642, after which Aberdour became the Mortons’ principal residence.
The Renaissance east wing was probably built around 1635 and stood by 1647. An inventory from that year lists luxurious furniture, carpets, and tapestries within the residence. The walled garden was also built during the 1630s, while the existing garden terraces were improved. These works transformed Aberdour from a secondary medieval seat into a residence suited to the household and display of a major Scottish noble family.
Fire, abandonment, and modern protection
A major fire badly damaged the castle in 1688. In 1690, the eleventh Earl consulted the architect James Smith, who surveyed the damage and proposed repairs together with a new wing north of the east range. Plans to demolish the tower house and central range were also considered, but were not carried out. Repairs to the east range were completed in 1703.
Government troops occupied Aberdour Castle during the Jacobite Rising of 1715, an attempt to restore the exiled Stuart dynasty to the British throne. A second fire caused extensive damage during their stay. In 1725, the Mortons bought nearby Cuttlehill House, renamed it Aberdour House, and ended the medieval castle’s use as a residence.
After 1725, the east range was repaired and used at different times as a schoolroom, barracks, and Masonic hall. The castle and gardens entered state care in 1924 and are now managed by Historic Environment Scotland. Archaeological investigations between 1977 and 1980 uncovered the foundations of the lower garden terraces. Their retaining walls were rebuilt in 1981, and the terraces were grassed after the excavations.
Aberdour Castle is protected as a Scheduled Ancient Monument, a legally protected archaeological or historic site of national importance. The grounds and former surrounding parks are included in Scotland’s Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes. The castle, dovecot, and walled garden are Category A listed buildings, while the western gate has Category B protection.
Remains
Aberdour Castle occupies a sequence of buildings and gardens developed around an early hall house overlooking the Dour Burn. The tower house forms the medieval core, with the central range to its south and the roofed east range extending the residence. Courtyard walls, service buildings, gardens, and a dovecot preserve evidence of the castle’s changing domestic and agricultural functions.
Medieval tower and central range
Tower house
The tower house has a skewed rectangular plan measuring approximately 16 by 11 metres. Its lower two storeys are the oldest part and date from around 1200, while the upper sections belong to the fifteenth-century rebuilding. Cubical masonry blocks, a flat northeastern buttress, and walls that widen toward their base indicate the early character of the structure. The collapsed south wall formerly contained a double-lancet window in an early thirteenth-century style.
The original hall house probably had two or three storeys, with a first-floor hall above an unvaulted basement. It may have been enclosed by a defensive timber stockade or other timber enclosure. The fifteenth-century rebuilding added two upper floors and rearranged the interior. Vaulted basements, including a kitchen, and a spiral stair were introduced, while the walls were finished with a parapet containing machicolations, openings through which objects could be dropped onto attackers.
Major collapses took place in 1844 and 1919. The tower is now largely collapsed, although its basement survives and a small section of the southeastern wall rises to its full height.
Central range and stair tower
The central range was begun around 1500, possibly as a two-storey building containing a great hall. Fragments of this first phase remain. The tower’s southern entrance was blocked and replaced by a ground-floor entrance from the east. A new stair tower was built at the southeastern corner of the central range. It originally had a conical roof and contained a broad spiral stair connecting the tower’s upper floors with the central range.
Around 1570, the fourth Earl of Morton rebuilt and extended the south block. The work created the present three-storey central range and new apartments. Its basement contains a vaulted kitchen and cellar, while suites of rooms occupy the floors above. The two first-floor bedrooms have individual closets and garderobes, medieval or early-modern privies usually built into thick external walls.
The western first-floor apartment is reached from the terraced garden by a southwestern stair and has a private stair leading to a chamber above. This arrangement indicates that the rooms served as the Earl and Countess’s apartments. The upper storey originally contained three further apartments, including one above the stair. Its timber floor is now missing. A horizontal string course, a projecting band of masonry, crosses the exterior, and one first-floor window has carved stone pilasters and strapwork decoration comparable to windows at Edinburgh Castle and Drochil Castle.
Courtyards and east range
Courtyard walls and service buildings
The sixteenth-century layout included a central range south of the tower house and new inner and outer courtyard walls. The eastern section of the inner courtyard wall survives as foundations, together with the base of a round tower and a porter’s lodge. The western section survives around the former service courtyard, where a brewery and bakehouse retain their ovens.
Renaissance east range
The east range is a long, narrow building with a short projecting wing to the southeast. It is the only part of the castle that remains roofed. Its first floor contains a long gallery entered from the central range. The gallery served for entertaining and contained 46 pictures, a harpsichord, and other furnishings in 1647.
The southeastern wing contains three chambers, one on each floor, connected by a spiral stair. Its first-floor chamber has a seventeenth-century painted ceiling decorated with fruit, foliage, and heraldic emblems. Crow-stepped gables and a sundial mark the exterior, while the east window of the long gallery has pilasters and a pediment. The present roof dates from the eighteenth century and is lower than the original, and the triangular pediments formerly above the side windows have been lost.
Gardens and agricultural features
Terraced garden
The terraced garden dates from the mid-sixteenth century and consists of four broad L-shaped terraces. It is among Scotland’s oldest gardens and extends the designed landscape associated with the fourth Earl of Morton’s expansion of the castle. An orchard was laid out at the foot of the terraces in 1690 and has since been replanted. Excavations between 1977 and 1980 revealed the foundations of the lower terraces, whose retaining walls were rebuilt in 1981.
Dovecot
A sixteenth-century dovecot, a structure for keeping domestic pigeons, stands south of the castle. It has a beehive-shaped form, rises approximately 9 metres in four steps, and contains about 600 nesting boxes. Projecting rat courses, masonry bands designed to prevent rats from climbing the walls, divide its stages.
Walled garden
The seventeenth-century walled garden lies west of the outer courtyard and covers approximately 5,000 square metres. Its walls reach up to 4 metres in height. The original entrances were placed at the southwestern and northeastern corners. The western garden door has carved pediments, strapwork, and the Douglas heart emblem. The eastern door leads toward St Fillan’s Church and bears the date 1632 together with a monogram formed from the initials of the Earl and Countess. A later entrance in the west wall dates from around 1740.
A summer house was built into the southeastern garden wall in 1675 and demolished during the eighteenth century. A kitchen garden lay across Kirk Lane, while bee boles, recesses designed to shelter beehives, survive in the garden walls. In 1691, botanist James Sutherland supplied exotic plants to Aberdour from Edinburgh’s Physic Garden, including Persian jasmine, tamarisks, and figs. During the Second World War, the walled garden was used as a market garden and for pig rearing.
An early seventeenth-century polygonal sundial, mounted on a nineteenth-century base, stands at the centre of the walled garden. It had been brought there before 1887, possibly from Castle Wigg in southwest Scotland.
Aberdour House
Former Cuttlehill House
Aberdour House, formerly Cuttlehill House, is a seventeenth-century building dated 1672. It was enlarged in 1715 and purchased by the Earl of Morton in 1725 as the family’s replacement residence after the castle ceased to be occupied. Its doorway has a surround in the style of James Gibbs. The former gardens retain a 12-metre obelisk dated 1744 to 1745. The house later fell into disuse and was redeveloped as private flats in the 1990s.
