Edzell Castle: A Scottish Tower House and Renaissance Garden
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Kingdom of Scotland
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Castle
On this page21 sections
History
Edzell Castle is a Scottish castle in the United Kingdom, at Edzell in Angus, whose surviving buildings grew from a twelfth-century timber settlement into a sixteenth-century tower house and Renaissance country residence. The earliest castle was a motte-and-bailey settlement, consisting of a fortified mound and an adjoining enclosed courtyard, built by the Abbott or Abbe family to guard the mouth of Glenesk, a route into the Highlands. It also formed the centre of the original village of Edzell.
From the Abbes to the Lindsays
The early settlement later passed from the Abbes to the Stirlings of Glenesk and then to the Lindsay family. In 1358, Alexander de Lindsay, the third son of David Lindsay of Crawford, married Katherine Stirling, heiress to the Stirling family. Their descendant David Lindsay became Earl of Crawford in 1398, and Edzell became the seat of a junior branch of the Lindsays.
David Lindsay inherited Edzell in 1513. Around 1520, he began replacing the earlier castle with a tower house and courtyard in a more sheltered position. The new site was overlooked by higher ground to the north, suggesting that the residence was planned principally as a country house rather than as a major fortress.
The sixteenth-century residence
In 1542, David Lindsay became the 9th Earl of Crawford after the death of his cousin, the 8th Earl. The succession was complicated because the former earl’s son, Alexander, had been disinherited. Around 1550, the new earl enlarged Edzell with a west range, a new entrance gate, and a hall. He also built Invermark Castle, probably for use as a hunting lodge.
Mary, Queen of Scots, stayed at Edzell for two nights in August 1562 during her northern royal progress. The journey included efforts to curb the power of George Gordon, 5th Earl of Huntly. During her stay, Mary held a meeting of the Privy Council, the monarch’s central advisory and administrative body, at the castle. By 1573, one room was known as the Queen’s chamber.
Sir David Lindsay, son of the 9th Earl, received an education in Paris and Cambridge and travelled in continental Europe. He was knighted in 1581, became a Lord of Session, or senior judge of Scotland’s Court of Session, in 1593, and joined the Privy Council in 1598. His improvement of the estates included mining and woodland planting. He also invited the Nuremberg prospectors Bernard Fechtenburg and Hans Ziegler to search for precious metals near Edzell.
King James VI visited Edzell twice, on 28 June 1580 and in August 1589. During the later visit, the Earl of Erroll submitted to the king while accusing the 6th Earl of Huntly of treason. News of the assassination of Henry III of France also reached the castle during this period.
The north range and the garden
In the late sixteenth century, Sir David Lindsay added the north range. In 1604, he began constructing the Renaissance walled garden known as the Pleasaunce. Its decoration commemorated the Union of the Crowns, James VI of Scotland’s accession to the English throne in 1603 while the two kingdoms retained separate institutions. The garden was intended as both a retreat and a place where distinguished guests could be entertained and instructed.
Sir David died heavily in debt in 1610, before the north range and garden were complete. The garden appears to have been finished hastily after his death. Its symbolic decoration later encouraged traditions linking Edzell with Freemasonry, a fraternal movement organized through lodges, and Rosicrucianism, an esoteric tradition associated with a legendary brotherhood. Historian Adam McLean proposed that the garden functioned as an early seventeenth-century “Mystery Temple,” but this remains an interpretation rather than an established purpose.
War, religious change, and sale
Edzell was not attacked during the campaigns of James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose, in the 1640s, although other properties belonging to the Presbyterian David Lindsay were attacked. In September 1651, troops serving Oliver Cromwell occupied the castle for about a month during the English parliamentary leader’s invasion of Scotland.
During the Presbyterian settlement of 1689, John Lindsay, Lord of Edzell, changed his allegiance from Presbyterianism to Episcopalianism, a form of Protestant church organization governed by bishops. After John and the parish minister were barred from the parish church, Episcopal services were held in the castle’s great hall.
Around the time of the Jacobite rising of 1715, David Lindsay, the last Lindsay lord of Edzell, sold the castle because of mounting family debts. The purchaser was the 4th Earl of Panmure, a fellow Jacobite, meaning a supporter of the exiled Stuart claim to the British thrones. The price was 192,502 Scots pounds, stated as equivalent to about 16,042 pounds sterling. After the rebellion failed, Panmure forfeited his property, and the Crown sold Edzell to the York Buildings Company, which dismantled the estate for profit.
Government troops, including the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, occupied Edzell in 1746 and caused further damage. After the York Buildings Company became bankrupt in 1764, the roofs and remaining contents were removed and sold to pay its creditors. The avenue of beech trees connecting the castle with the village was also felled.
Later ownership and protection
William Maule, Earl Panmure, acquired the remaining property. After his death in 1782, it passed to his nephew George Ramsay, 8th Earl of Dalhousie, and remained with the Dalhousie family. A caretaker was appointed from the 1870s, and a cottage for him was built in 1901.
The walled garden entered state care in 1932, followed by the rest of the castle in 1935. Historic Environment Scotland, Scotland’s national body for caring for and interpreting many historic sites and monuments, now maintains the castle and garden. Edzell Castle and the motte are protected as Scheduled Monuments. The garden is included in Scotland’s Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, while the caretaker’s house is a Category B listed building and the associated pigeon house is listed at Category A.
Folklore and remembered figures
Local folklore tells of a Lindsay laird cursed by a woman after her sons were hanged for poaching. The story says that the laird’s pregnant wife died on the same day and that wolves later devoured the laird. Another tradition identifies a White Lady at the castle with Catherine Campbell, second wife of the 9th Earl of Crawford. According to the story, she was buried alive in the family tomb in 1578.
Remains
The surviving complex is arranged around a courtyard and consists of the early sixteenth-century tower house, the west range added around 1550, and the partly completed late-sixteenth-century north range. The east and south ranges survive as foundations probably belonging to stables and a bakehouse. Red sandstone forms the buildings, which were originally harled or plastered. The residence includes gun holes, draw-bars, grilles, and other defensive features, but its planning and accommodation reflect a country residence more than a major defensive fortress.
Castle buildings
Stirling Tower
The four-storey tower house, known as Stirling Tower after Edzell’s earlier Stirling lords, stands about 16 metres high and measures approximately 13 by 10 metres in plan. Its basement walls are more than 2 metres thick and narrow to about 1.5 metres at first-floor level. Two vaulted cellars occupy the basement, with the first-floor hall above them. Marks in the walls show where a minstrels’ gallery and a timber screen once stood, the screen concealing the service area and a narrow stair from the cellar.
The northern entrance was protected by inverted-keyhole-shaped gun holes. A nearby slot held a draw-bar, and mason’s marks remain around the doorway. The entrance could also be closed by a wooden outer door, an iron grille, and an internal bar. A broad spiral stair rises to private chambers on the upper floors and ends at a cap-house giving access to the parapet walk. Latrines were placed on the upper floors.
Bartizans, or projecting corner turrets, occupy the tower’s four corners, with additional projections midway along the walls. The parapet rests on projecting corbels, or masonry supports, arranged in two alternating tiers. This produces an early example of chequered corbelling, a decorative pattern of projecting supports beneath a parapet.
West range
The two-storey west range contains the principal entrance, reached through an arched passage into the courtyard. Armorial panels once occupied the spaces above the gate. Inside were a kitchen, vaulted storage cellars, a larger hall, a drawing room, and private rooms. Its windows were larger than those of the tower and had iron grilles with small gun holes below them.
North range
Only the western part of the three-storey north range was completed. It contained another kitchen, storage spaces, a large hall, and private chambers within the north-west round tower. A fireplace nearly seven metres wide was combined with an external oven. A courtyard stair turret provided access, and fragments of its intricately carved door surround survive. The north-range windows opened only towards the courtyard.
Former eastern and southern ranges
The east and south sides of the courtyard are represented by foundations. These remains probably belonged to the castle’s stables and bakehouse, preserving the outline of parts of the domestic and service area that once completed the courtyard arrangement.
Castle Hillock
The earlier motte, known as Castle Hillock, lies about 300 metres south-west of the later castle beside a bend in the West Water. It is a low, partly natural mound aligned from north-west to south-east. The mound measures approximately 36 metres long, 16 metres wide at its broadest point, and 4 metres high. An outer bailey formerly surrounded it and was enclosed by a deep ditch. Its dimensions are given as up to about 61 metres across, or approximately 100 by 60 metres.
The Renaissance Pleasaunce
Enclosure and decoration
The Pleasaunce lies south-east of the castle. This rectangular Renaissance garden measures approximately 52 metres from north to south and 43.5 metres from east to west. A wall about 3.6 metres high and approximately 60 centimetres thick encloses it. The north wall forms part of the castle courtyard wall, while the other three walls carry elaborate decoration.
Pilasters once divided the garden walls into compartments about 3 metres wide. Niches in the east and south walls may have held statues. The pediments of the east wall incorporate scrollwork and the thistle, fleur-de-lis, shamrock, and rose, symbols associated with the Union of the Crowns. Lindsay heraldry, chequered bands derived from the arms of the Stirling family of Glenesk, and three seven-pointed stars also appear on the walls. Some recesses may have served as nesting holes for birds. The square pediments on the south wall and the unfinished treatment of the west wall indicate that construction stopped before the garden was fully completed. Archaeological investigation has revealed something of its former arrangement, although no original plan survives.
Planetary Deities
Three groups of seven carved panels decorate the garden. The east wall carries the Planetary Deities, classical gods and goddesses associated with the seven planets known in antiquity. Luna, Mercury, Venus, Sol, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are shown within vesica-shaped frames. Their designs derive from engravings made in 1528 and 1529 by the German artist Georg Pencz, also identified as Iorg Bentz, a pupil of Albrecht Dürer. The initials “I. B.” appear on the Mars carving.
Liberal Arts
The south wall carries the seven Liberal Arts, the traditional branches of education. Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic, Arithmetic, Music, Geometry, and Astronomy represent the trivium and quadrivium taught in European medieval and Renaissance universities. The trivium comprised grammar, rhetoric, and logic, while the quadrivium comprised arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy. Each panel is about 1 metre high and 60 to 75 centimetres wide. Grammar and Music are damaged, and the Astronomy panel is missing.
Virtues
The west wall carries the seven Virtues, personifications of moral qualities. Faith, Hope, and Charity are joined by the four classical cardinal virtues, Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance. These carvings are set within plain rectangular frames, and Faith is damaged. The designs for the Virtues and Liberal Arts were based on work by the Flemish artist Marten de Vos and engravings by Jan Sadeler and Crispijn de Passe. The varying quality of the carvings has been interpreted as evidence of financial difficulties late in the work.
Bath house and summer house
A bath house and a two-storey summer house were built at the garden corners farthest from the castle. The bath house is ruined. It contained three rooms and a well that may also have supplied irrigation, and it was uncovered in 1855.
The summer house survives with a lower room containing a groin vault, a central table, and a surrounding stone bench. A spiral stair rises to an upper chamber with the only surviving carved-oak wall panelling from the castle. The building also has elaborately decorated gun holes and has been attributed to Thomas Leiper, an Aberdeenshire stonemason.
Planting and inscriptions
Seventeenth-century records indicate that fruit was grown in the garden. The present planting was recreated in the 1930s. Hedges are clipped into the forms of the Scottish thistle, English rose, and French fleur-de-lis, alongside the Lindsay mottos “Dum Spiro Spero” and “Endure Forte.”
