Slains Castle, also known as New Slains Castle to distinguish it from the nearby

Old Slains Castle Slains Castle (otherwise known as Old Slains Castle) is a ruined castle near Collieston in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. It is not to be confused with New Slains Castle, a separate building located five miles to the north-east. Built in the13th centur ...

, is a ruined castle in

Aberdeenshire Aberdeenshire ( sco, Aiberdeenshire; gd, Siorrachd Obar Dheathain) is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland. It takes its name from the County of Aberdeen which has substantially different boundaries. The Aberdeenshire Council area inclu ...

, Scotland. It overlooks the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian ...

from its cliff-top site east of

Cruden Bay Cruden Bay is a small village in Scotland, on the north coast of the Bay of Cruden in Aberdeenshire, north of Aberdeen. Just west of Slains Castle, Cruden Bay is said to have been the site of a battle in which the Scots under King Malcolm II d ...

. The core of the castle is a 16th-century

tower house A tower house is a particular type of stone structure, built for defensive purposes as well as habitation. Tower houses began to appear in the Middle Ages, especially in mountainous or limited access areas, in order to command and defend strateg ...

, built by the 9th Earl of Erroll. Significant reconstruction of the castle has been carried out a number of times, lastly in 1837 when it was rebuilt as a

Scots Baronial Scottish baronial or Scots baronial is an architectural style of 19th century Gothic Revival which revived the forms and ornaments of historical architecture of Scotland in the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. Reminiscent of Scot ...

mansion. At one time it had three extensive gardens but is now a roofless ruin. Plans to restore the castle have been on hold since 2009. It is a

Historic Environment Scotland Historic Environment Scotland (HES) ( gd, Àrainneachd Eachdraidheil Alba) is an executive non-departmental public body responsible for investigating, caring for and promoting Scotland's historic environment. HES was formed in 2015 from the mer ...

Category B

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern I ...

. The castle is linked with the novels of

Bram Stoker Abraham Stoker (8 November 1847 – 20 April 1912) was an Irish author who is celebrated for his 1897 Gothic horror novel '' Dracula''. During his lifetime, he was better known as the personal assistant of actor Sir Henry Irving and busi ...

, including ''

Dracula ''Dracula'' is a novel by Bram Stoker, published in 1897. As an epistolary novel, the narrative is related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist, but opens with solicitor Jonathan Harker taki ...

''.

History

New Slains Castle was the home of the Earl of Erroll, a hereditary title within the Hay family. The Hays had been a powerful dynasty in the area since the 14th century and owned large tracts of land in eastern Aberdeenshire, notably the parishes of Slains and Cruden. In 1453 Sir William Hay was made the first

Earl of Erroll Earl of Erroll () is a title in the Peerage of Scotland. It was created in 1453 for Sir William Hay. The subsidiary titles held by the Earl of Erroll are ''Lord Hay'' (created 1449) and ''Lord Slains'' (1452), both in the Peerage of Scotland. ...

by King James II. At this time the local seat of power was

, near

Collieston Collieston is a small former fishing village on the North Sea coast in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. The village lies just north of the Sands of Forvie Special Protection Area, between Cruden Bay and Newburgh. History The earliest recorded hist ...

, some to the south-west. The first building on the site of New Slains Castle was constructed for Francis Hay, 9th Earl of Erroll, following the destruction of the original Slains Castle. Named Bowness, it was located on a sea cliff close to what is now the village of

. Francis Hay, 9th Earl of Erroll, a convert to

Roman Catholicism The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

, had conspired with other Catholic nobles, including the Earl of Huntly, with whom he joined in a brief rebellion in 1589. Erroll was also a signatory of the "

Spanish Blanks The Spanish blanks plot was an alleged pro-Spanish Catholic conspiracy in Scotland, discovered in late 1592. A number of letters to Spain were discovered, which included blank sheets signed by prominent nobles. Background The Spanish Armada had f ...

", documents signed by members of the Catholic nobility of Scotland, and otherwise left to be filled in with the terms of Spanish aid. Erroll was declared a traitor in 1594, and Old Slains Castle was destroyed in October on the orders of

King James VI James VI and I (James Charles Stuart; 19 June 1566 – 27 March 1625) was King of Scotland as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the Scottish and English crowns on 24 March 1603 until hi ...

. After a period abroad Erroll returned to Scotland, and abjured Roman Catholicism in 1597, subsequently returning to royal favour. He abandoned Old Slains and built a courtyard and square tower on the present site, probably around 1600, although the exact date is not known. The earliest mention of the tower was made in a gazetteer published in 1660. Another document from 1732 specifically mentions that Bowness was built from new ‘by Francis, Earl of Erroll, on the king's demolishing the original castle of Slains’. The name Bowness derives from a double rock arch at the north end of the peninsula, thought to resemble a bow. The original building was added to in 1664, when the wings around the courtyard were extended by the addition of a gallery or corridor, and was renamed New Slains Castle. In 1707 the entrance front was renewed. New Slains Castle is linked to the Jacobite cause in Scotland. In 1705,

Louis XIV Louis XIV (Louis Dieudonné; 5 September 16381 September 1715), also known as Louis the Great () or the Sun King (), was List of French monarchs, King of France from 14 May 1643 until his death in 1715. His reign of 72 years and 110 days is the Li ...

, King of France, who was at war with England and Scotland, sent secret agent Nathaniel Hooke to foment a Jacobite Rebellion in Scotland. Hooke landed at New Slains Castle, having been brought from Dunkirk by the fourteen-gun French navy frigate, ''Audacious.'' His efforts came to nothing after they were thwarted by James Hamilton, 4th Duke of Hamilton, head of the Country Party in the Scottish Parliament. Hooke returned to New Slains Castle in 1707, the year of the formation of the United Kingdom. Using the castle as his base, he toured Scotland gathering military intelligence to establish the feasibility of a combined French / Jacobite invasion of Scotland. He returned to France, where his report was read to

at the

Palace of Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, u ...

. The French King authorised the invasion. The planned French invasion of Britain (the objective was Scotland) was launched in 1708. Between 5,000 and 6000 men, both French and Jacobite, sailed from Dunkirk in 28 ships with

James Edward Stuart James Francis Edward Stuart (10 June 16881 January 1766), nicknamed the Old Pretender by Whigs, was the son of King James II and VII of England, Scotland and Ireland, and his second wife, Mary of Modena. He was Prince of Wales from ...

on board the flagship. The fleet eventually reached the Firth of Forth, where the intention had been to disembark the invasion army together with James Edward Stuart at

Leith Leith (; gd, Lìte) is a port area in the north of the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, founded at the mouth of the Water of Leith. In 2021, it was ranked by ''Time Out'' as one of the top five neighbourhoods to live in the world. The earliest ...

. However, fifty ships from the newly formed British navy now arrived to chase the invasion fleet out of the Forth and up the northeast coast of Scotland. Discussion took place about landing James Edward Stuart at an unspecified Aberdeenshire castle, plausibly New Slains Castle, although the French admiral of the fleet refused to allow this to happen. The invasion was abandoned, and the fleet returned to Dunkirk. Mary Hay, 14th Countess of Erroll recruited men from Aberdeenshire during the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion. When she died childless in 1758, the Earl of Erroll title passed to her great-nephew, James, Lord Boyd. James was the grandson of her sister, Lady Margaret Hay and the son of William Boyd, 4th Earl of Kilmarnock, who was executed on

Tower Hill Tower Hill is the area surrounding the Tower of London in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is infamous for the public execution of high status prisoners from the late 14th to the mid 18th century. The execution site on the higher gro ...

in 1746. James, Lord Boyd changed his name to Hay. The Kilmarnock title survived in part down the succession, whereby, up until recently, the heir to the Erroll earldom was referred to as Lord Kilmarnock. Samuel Johnson and James Boswell visited New Slains Castle in 1773. They were entertained by James, Lord Boyd (Hay) and his brother Charles. They spent a night in the castle, although James Boswell did not sleep well:

I had a most elegant room. But there was a fire in it which blazed, and the sea, to which my windows looked, roared, and the pillows were made of some sea-fowl’s feathers which had to me a disagreeable smell. So that by all these causes, I was kept awake a good time. I began to think that Lord Kilmarnock might appear to me eheaded in 1746 and I was somewhat dreary. But the thought did not last long, and I fell asleep.

Neither Johnson or Boswell mention that the earl and his brother had fought on opposite sides at the Battle of Culloden in 1746; The earl with the government army, and his brother Charles (and his father) with the Jacobite army. In 1820 William Hay, 18th Earl of Erroll, married Lady Elizabeth FitzClarence, the illegitimate daughter of King William IV and

Dorothea Jordan Dorothea Jordan, née Bland (21 November 17615 July 1816), was an Anglo-Irish actress, as well as a courtesan. She was the long-time mistress of Prince William, Duke of Clarence, later William IV, and the mother of ten illegitimate children by ...

. In the 1830s the 18th Earl commissioned the Aberdeen architect John Smith to remodel the castle. This resulted in a virtual rebuilding of Slains in a

style, including granite facings, in 1836–1837. Gardens were laid out in the late 1890s by the landscape architect T. H. Mawson. SlainsCastleDracula

Slains Castle is associated with the author

, who was a regular visitor to nearby Cruden Bay between 1892 and 1910. The castle is mentioned in his locally set novels, ''

The Watter's Mou' ''The Watter's Mou is a novel by Bram Stoker Abraham Stoker (8 November 1847 – 20 April 1912) was an Irish author who is celebrated for his 1897 Gothic horror novel ''Dracula''. During his lifetime, he was better known as the persona ...

'' and ''

The Mystery of the Sea ''The Mystery of the Sea'', a mystery novel by Bram Stoker, was originally published in 1902. Stoker is best known for his 1897 novel ''Dracula'', but ''The Mystery of the Sea'' contains many of the same compelling elements. It tells the story of ...

'':

At first the cleft runs from west to east, and broadens out into a wide bay of which one side a steep grassy slope leads towards the new castle of Slains...’ ''The Watter’s Mou’.'' My own section for watching was between Slains Castle and Dunbuy, as wild and rocky a bit of coast as anyone could wish to see. Behind Slains runs in a long narrow inlet with beetling cliffs, sheer on either side, and at its entrance a wild turmoil of rocks are hurled together in titanic confusion. ''The Mystery of the Sea''.

The castle may have provided the inspiration for Kyllion Castle in ''

The Jewel of Seven Stars ''The Jewel of Seven Stars'' is a horror novel by Irish writer Bram Stoker, first published by Heinemann in 1903. The story is a first-person narrative of a young man pulled into an archaeologist's plot to revive Queen Tera, an ancient Egypti ...

-'' a mansion house on the edge of a cliff. Slains Castle is commonly linked with ''

''. It is likely that the castle provided a visual palette for Bram Stoker when he started writing the book in Cruden Bay. A distinctive room in Slains Castle, the octagonal hall, may be the source for the octagonal room in ''Dracula''.

‘The Count halted, putting down my bags, closed the door, and crossing the room, opened another door which led into a small octagonal room lit by a single lamp, and seemingly without a window of any sort.’ ''Dracula''.

Shortly before 1900,

Charles Hay, 20th Earl of Erroll Charles Gore Hay, 20th Earl of Erroll, KT, CB (7 February 1852 – 8 July 1927), styled Lord Hay until 1891, was a Scottish soldier and Conservative politician. Early life Hay was the eldest surviving son of eight children born to Eliza Amelia ...

, became an occasional visitor to the castle, spending most of his time in England. New Slains Castle was rented out as a high-class summer holiday residence, notably to

Robert Baden-Powell Lieutenant-General Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, ( ; (Commonly pronounced by others as ) 22 February 1857 – 8 January 1941) was a British Army officer, writer, founder and first Chief Scout of the wor ...

in 1900, and Prime Minister

H. H. Asquith Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith, (12 September 1852 – 15 February 1928), generally known as H. H. Asquith, was a British statesman and Liberal Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom ...

in 1903 and 1908.

Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...

spent two nights at the castle in 1908 as a guest of

. In 1916 the 20th Earl of Erroll sold New Slains, ending more than 300 years of occupation by the family. He had been impoverished by the lavish spending of the family fortune by his ancestors, an agricultural recession starting from the 1890s, and inheritance taxes. It was purchased by Sir John Ellerman, the wealthy but secretive owner of the

Ellerman Lines Ellerman Lines was a UK cargo and passenger shipping company that operated from the late nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. It was founded in the late 19th century, and continued to expand by acquiring smaller shipping lines un ...

shipping company, who never visited the castle. It was put up for sale again in 1922 and bought by Percy P. Harvey from London who then disposed of the land, although the castle remained unsold. The castle was then bought by Charles Brand Ltd, a Dundee-based demolition company who specialised in buying Scottish castle and mansions for demolition, and then making money from selling off masonry and other fittings. The demolition went ahead in the summer of 1925. An advert headlined ‘Demolition of Slains Castle’ in the ''Aberdeen Press and Journal'', 5 September 1925, listed various items for sale: ‘Battens, Flooring, sarking, slates, doors, windows, baths, wash hand basins, sinks, stable fittings, stone paving and other building materials’. Perhaps this had not gone well, because a new advert appeared notifying a sale at the castle on Saturday 17 April 1926. Now included in the inventory were the following: panel doors (yellow pine), water closets, bedroom grates, granite sills and corners. It is often stated that the roof of New Slains Castle was removed to avoid paying taxes, although this is not what happened. The roof was removed by the demolition company to recover lead and slates for resale. New Slains Castle is now a roofless shell, with most of the outer and inner walls standing to full height. In 2004 it was reported that the Slains Partnership was preparing plans for the restoration of the building and conversion into 35 holiday apartments. In August 2007 the scheme was granted outline planning permission by Aberdeenshire Council, but the plans were put on hold in 2009 due to the

Great Recession The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline, i.e. a recession, observed in national economies globally that occurred from late 2007 into 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At ...

Architecture

New Slains Castle is a

Category B

. At first inspection, the ruin appears to be a blend of several different architectural styles and periods, due to diverse

masonry Masonry is the building of structures from individual units, which are often laid in and bound together by mortar; the term ''masonry'' can also refer to the units themselves. The common materials of masonry construction are bricks, building ...

including older mortared

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies un ...

, mortared medieval red brick, mortared sandstone and newer well-faced granite. In fact, most of the architecture seems to derive from a rather cohesive interval 1597 to 1664, which construction is the most expansive and includes the mortared rough granite and medieval brick. The 1836 work adds smoother granite facing that contrasts with the older construction style. The defensive works of the castle include the use of the

cliffs; an abyss to the west that functions as a deep impassable

moat A moat is a deep, broad ditch, either dry or filled with water, that is dug and surrounds a castle, fortification, building or town, historically to provide it with a preliminary line of defence. In some places moats evolved into more extensive ...

; and a ruined

rampart Rampart may refer to: * Rampart (fortification), a defensive wall or bank around a castle, fort or settlement Rampart may also refer to: * "O'er the Ramparts We Watched" is a key line from " The Star-Spangled Banner", the national anthem of the ...

that would have been the main entrance on the south. The ruins include reasonably well-preserved elements of three- and four-storey structural elements and a basement course over some of the range, especially at the eastern side. There are well-preserved basement kitchen works with numerous

fire pit A fire pit or a fire hole can vary from a pit dug in the ground to an elaborate gas burning structure of stone, brick, and metal. The defining feature of fire pits is that they are designed to contain fire and prevent it from spreading. Some rece ...

s and masonry indented storage spaces. The internal doorways are primarily of well-preserved wooden

lintel A lintel or lintol is a type of beam (a horizontal structural element) that spans openings such as portals, doors, windows and fireplaces. It can be a decorative architectural element, or a combined ornamented structural item. In the case of ...

construction, with numerous examples of mortared sandstone and medieval brickwork archways. The interior of the ground level is a maze of passageways and smaller rooms, reflecting a high state of occupancy in 17th-century times.

References

External links

New Slains Castle and Bram Stoker
Cruden Bay community website
Slains Castle Cruden Bay
About Aberdeen
Slains Castle And Two Of Scotland's Forgotten Churches , Abandoned Road Trip Scotland

Slains Castle 360° Virtual Tour
{{DEFAULTSORT:Slains Castle 1590s establishments in Scotland 16th-century fortifications Ruined castles in Aberdeenshire Country houses in Aberdeenshire Clan Hay Category B listed buildings in Aberdeenshire Bram Stoker Scottish baronial architecture

History

Architecture

See also

References

Further reading

External links