Skulferatu #155 - Dunbar Castle, Dunbar, East Lothian

While out and about in Dunbar, I took a walk down to the harbour so I could have a wander by the ruins of the old castle that once stood on the rocks there.  There is not much left of what once must have been a pretty impressive building, and the grounds of the castle are now closed to the public due to health and safety concerns over the crumbling remains and the steep cliffs beside them.  This means though, that they are now an ideal nesting ground for the local colony of Kittiwakes.  So called because of their call – kittiwake, kittiwake.  A call that dominates the harbour during breeding season as well as the rather pungent, fishy smell of their poo.  

 

 

View of Dunbar Castle from the harbour

 

 

Dunbar Castle

 

 

A Kittiwake nesting in the castle ruins

 

 

Ruins of Dunbar Castle

 

 

Crumbling ruins of the castle

 

The history of Dunbar Castle stretches back nearly two thousand years to when the first fortifications were built on the rocks there by the Votadini people.  It was later a stronghold of Bernicia and then Northumbria before coming into possession of Kenneth MacAlpin, the King of the Scots.

 

The first stone castle built on the site is believed to have been constructed in around 1070 by Gospatric, the Earl of Northumberland.  He had fled to Scotland after being exiled by William the Conqueror and was granted the castle at Dunbar and the lands surrounding it by King Malcolm III.  The castle remained in his family’s hands for many generations after, with various buildings, extensions and renovations being carried out on it.

 

In 1338 the castle was the scene of a long drawn out and violent siege by the English army.  Led by William Montague, the Earl of Salisbury, English troops had surrounded the castle while Patrick Dunbar, the Earl of Dunbar and owner of the castle, was away on business.  Looking after things while he was gone was his wife, Agnes.  Also known as Black Agnes for her dark hair and complexion, she was someone not to be messed with, something Montague soon found out.

 

As this was in the time before canons came into use, the English army had brought with them several trebuchet type engines.  These were large wooden machines used to throw huge stones against the castle walls to try to smash them down.  As they unleashed a barrage of boulders at the castle, Agnes stood with her ladies and maids at the top of the walls, and they would amble over to the spot where a stone had hit and would rub it down with clean, white cloths as if they were dusting.  They would then laugh down at the English troops and ask if all they could do was make a little dust. 

 

Having realised that the trebuchets were not going to take down the walls of the castle, the English army then deployed the ‘Sow’.  This was an enormous machine, built of wood, with several levels and a roof on it.  It was used to transport men right up to the castle and protect them while they tried to dig under the walls to undermine them and then storm into the fortress.  So, the ‘Sow’ was pushed on its creaking wheels up against the wall where, peering down on it, Agnes shouted to Montague that he should take more care of his piglets.  She then ordered a huge boulder, that had been fired earlier into the castle, to be pushed over the wall and dropped onto the sow.  It crashed through the wooden roof, smashed through the floors and crushed the men below.  At the same time the archers within the castle let loose a rain of arrows, one of which struck a knight standing next to Montague, killing him instantly.  Montague, who obviously had a rather dark sense of humour, cried out to those by him – ‘Ah, there comes one of my lady’s tire pins; Agnes’s love shafts go straight to the heart.’

 

Having had no luck by using brute force, Montague decided that a bit of bribery may be called for.  Under the cover of night, he had one of his men pay the soldier on guard at the main entrance to leave the gate unlocked so that the English troops could easily make their way in.  The guard happily accepted a purse of gold coins and then told Agnes what was planned.  She then had her men made ready for the ‘surprise’ attack by Montague.  It was not long before Montague led a group of his soldiers to the castle where, as they entered, the portcullis was dropped by Agnes’s men, trapping one of Montague’s men who had pushed past him just as they went in.  The plan had been to capture Montague, and on seeing that they had trapped the wrong man, Agnes shouted down to him – ‘Farewell, Montague, I intended that you should have supped with us and assisted us in defending the castle against the English.’  At that, I imagine, Montague gave her the finger and walked off in a bit of a huff.

 

 

An illustration of Black Agnes on the castle walls

 

As the siege went on Montague tried one last ploy.  His men captured Agnes’s brother John and brought him to Dunbar.  John was then paraded by the castle with Montague telling Agnes that unless she surrendered, he would hang him in front of her and leave his body to rot.  Agnes replied to him that she he should go ahead and do that as she would benefit by her brother’s death, as she was his heir.  Montague didn’t carry out his threat, though whether Agnes and John’s relationship ever recovered after this I don’t know.

 

For five months the siege went on and by the end of that time those within the castle were nearing starvation.  Then one night a saviour appeared in the guise of Sir Alexander Ramsay.  He and forty of his men took some small boats and sneaked past the English ships guarding the seaward way to the castle.  With them they brought supplies of food and weapons.  With those in the castle feeling renewed and ready to fight again, Montague decided to cut his losses and he and his men packed up and headed off back down South.

 

Over the following years, Dunbar Castle had many owners and was the scene of various battles and conflicts.  It was destroyed a couple of times, then rebuilt and remodelled.

 

 

Print of the ruins of Dunbar Castle - 1815

 

In 1566, after the murder of Rizzio at Holyrood Palace, it was to Dunbar Castle that Mary, Queen of Scots, fled along with her husband Lord Darnley, one of those suspected of Rizzio’s murder.  She fled there again after the murder of Darnley, this time with Lord Bothwell who she later married, and who was the suspected murderer of Darnley.  And it was from Dunbar Castle that Mary marched to Carberry Hill where she ended up surrendering to her enemies.

 

In 1567 the castle was the scene of another siege when it was held by supporters of Bothwell.  The Regent of Scotland, James Stuart the Earl of Moray, finding them a complete pain in the arse, wanted them out.  Bothwell’s supporters held out for a short while but on realising that no help was coming, they surrendered. The guns of the castle were seized and removed.  It was then ordered that the castle should be demolished to prevent it from ever falling into the hands of the English.  This was partially done, but the cost of carrying out a full demolition was found to be so prohibitive that what remained of the building was just left to fall into ruin.  Much of what was left was then demolished in the Nineteenth Century to rebuild the harbour.

 

 

Ruins of Dunbar Castle

 

 

Ruins of Dunbar Castle

 

 

Ruins of Dunbar Castle

 

 

Ruins of Dunbar Castle

 

As I wandered around the harbour and by the castle ruins, all was busy with fishermen sorting lobster creels and nets.  While in the cliffs and the rough, weather worn ruins of the castle, Kittiwakes called out and flew to and from the nests they had built there.  Walking round to a quiet place by the cliffs under the castle walls, I left a Skulferatu in a lichen covered gap.

 

 

Skulferatu #155

 

 

Skulferatu #155 in a lichen covered gap in the cliffs

 

 

Map showing the location of Skulferatu #155

 

The coordinates for the Skulferatu are -

 

Latitude 56.005296

Longitude -2.518109

 

what3words: blame.bulldozer.prospers

 

I used the following sources for information on Dunbar Castle –

 

Historical Tales of the Wars of Scotland and the Border Raids, Forays and Conflicts

Vol. 1

John Parker Lawson

1852

 

Scotland’s Story

A History of Scotland for Boys and Girls

H. E. Marshall

1906

 

Canmore – Dunbar Castle

Skulferatu #154 - Friarscroft, Dunbar, East Lothian

On a warm spring day, a rarity in Scotland, I took a trip on the train from Edinburgh down the East Coast to the small town of Dunbar.  There, I went for a wander along to the glamorous location of the Co-op supermarket.  Not that I had any intention of shopping there, rather I’d come along to have a look at an old ruin standing in a grassy bit of land just a few metres away from the supermarket entrance.  A red stone building that was once the tower of a priory church and was later converted into a dovecot. 

 

 

The Dovecot at Friarscroft

 

 

Friarscroft Dovecot

 

 

Looking up

 

The church that once stood here was founded in around 1240 by Cristiana de Brus, the Countess of Dunbar, for the Trinitarian Order of Friars for the Redemption of Christian Captives.  They also went by the shorter name of the Trinitarians, though were more commonly known as the Red Friars.  The Trinitarians were founded in 1193 by John de Matha with the purpose of buying back Christians captured during the crusades and held for ransom.  The order was then confirmed by Pope Innocent III and instructed that its revenues were to be divided in three ways; to support themselves, to help the poor, and finally to pay the ransoms for Christians captured by ‘infidels’. Altogether the Trinitarians had eleven houses in Scotland and England, but all these establishments were quite small and consisted only of three friars and three lay brothers.  

 

 

A Trinitarian Friar

 

It is believed that the Trinitarians based at Friarscroft may have been responsible for founding an early hospital at Dunbar.  Little else is known about them and the priory itself fell out of use in 1529.

 

 

Sketch of the dovecot circa 1897

 

Recent excavations showed that the Dovecot was originally the central tower of the church, with the church building being thirty-nine metres long and eight metres wide, so pretty big for that time.  Excavations of the area also showed there had been a cemetery to the south of the building, and that there was evidence of ‘medieval ploughing’ to the north. 

 

 

 

The Watcher

 

 

Pigeons

 

As I had a look around the building and dodged the low hanging branches of the trees growing around it, pigeons flapped past me up to the entrance holes on the roof.  There they strutted and cooed, and ever so often peered down at me to see what I was up to. Maybe they were hoping that I wouldn’t notice the huge mound of pigeon poo at the entrance to the dovecot.  A mound so big that it had jammed open the small iron gate there.  A mound so big and smelly that I decided against trying to peer up through the doorway to see what it looked like inside, and to see if there was anywhere to leave a Skulferatu.  Instead, I went to a gap in the crumbling cement on the outside wall where I left the Skulferatu that had accompanied me.

 

 

Skulferatu #154

 

 

Skulferatu #154 in a gap in the crumbling cement

 

 

Skulferatu #154 in a gap in the crumbling cement

 

 

Map showing location of Skulferatu #154

 

The coordinates for the Skulferatu are -

 

Latitude 56.001388

Longitude -2.518205

 

what3words: wedding.sweat.shipwreck

 

I used the following sources for information on Friarscroft –

 

The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland

From the Earliest Christian Times to the Seventeenth Century, Volume Three

David MacGibbon and Thomas Ross

1897

 

English Monastic Life

Francis Aidan Gasquet

1904

 

Friarscroft and the Trinitarians in Dunbar

John Wordsworth

1983

Skulferatu #108 - Spott Parish Church, Spott, Dunbar, East Lothian

In the tiny village of Spott, near Dunbar, there sits a small, picturesque church.  Though very little, if anything, of the original building remains, a church has stood on that spot in Spott since the early 14^th century. 

 

Spott Parish Church

 

I wandered up there on a warm and blustery day to have a look around.  It was a very peaceful place of old gravestones, trees and birds singing away merrily.  While inside the church a few members of the local community had met up for a bit of a get together.  Of course, I wasn’t there for socialising, I was there to leave a Skulferatu in a place with an unexpected dark history…especially if you were one of the early clergymen who preached there.

 

Gravestone at Spott

 

Detail of gravestone at Spott

 

Gravestone at Spott

 

Spott Church didn’t have a great deal of luck with several of its early clerics.  Around 1530, Robert Galbraith became the Rector of the church.  He was also a judge in the High Court and Court of Session at Edinburgh.  In 1544 he made a judgement on a case that did not go down well with the defendant.  So, unfortunately for Galbraith, while he was about his business in Edinburgh, the disgruntled defendant spotted him and murdered him.

 

View of Spott Parish Church and graveyard

 

In 1559, John Hamilton, the brother of the Earl of Arran, was appointed as the Parson of Spott.  He later went on to rise up the ranks of the church and became the Archbishop of St Andrews.   However, in 1571 he was tried and found guilty of aiding and abetting in the murders of the Earl of Moray and also Lord Darnley, the late husband of Mary, Queen of Scots.  He was hanged by the Mercat Cross in Stirling a few days after his trial. 

 

Gravestone at Spott

 

Gravestone at Spott

 

View from Spott Parish Church Graveyard

 

In 1567, John Kello became the first protestant Minister of Spott Church.  He is also the most notorious.  John Kello was born in Linlithgow and as a young man married a local girl, Margaret Thomson.  John, who was an ambitious and eloquent man, decided to enter the Presbyterian Church and was ordained as a Presbyterian Minister while attending the first General Assembly in Edinburgh in1560.  He soon required a reputation as a powerful and stirring preacher and in 1567 was appointed to the Parish of Spott.  So, there he moved with Margaret and their three children.

 

At Spott, John’s reputation grew as a preacher, preachers being the rock stars of those days.  However, unlike rock stars, preachers weren’t paid very well. John had soon come to realise this and looked for ways to better himself as he wanted the finer things in life, he wanted land, prestige, and wealth.  When he had married Margaret, she had brought a small dowry with her.  John thought he could maybe use her dowry to make some money and so he used it to buy and sell land.  Unfortunately, a couple of his land deals went wrong, and he ended up in debt.

 

While he fretted about his debts and ways to make more money, John’s sermons still attracted a good crowd to the church.  One of his congregation was a rich young woman who had recently been widowed.  Being a very pious type, she would often seek John out for spiritual advice.  John found that he enjoyed her company and soon his thoughts turned to how his life would be if he was married to her and had her fortune as his own.  She would make him a rich man of some social standing.  If he were married to her, he could achieve his ambitions.  The more he thought like this, the more he began to despise his own wife, Margaret.  He became bitter and began to blame her for his failings.    

 

Margaret, who by all accounts was a cheerful and likeable person, and a loving wife, soon bore the brunt of John’s anger at his thwarted ambitions. She, however carried on in her sunny and loyal way assuming that John’s moods would soon pass, and he would be her loving husband once again.  This annoyed John even more and he began to wish she would just die.  If she were dead, then he could marry again and marry well.  He then began to think about ways to kill her and decided that he could achieve his ambitions in life if he murdered her.

 

Once he had made the decision to murder Margaret, John acquired some poison and used that in an attempt to kill her.  It didn’t work.  She was a fit, healthy woman with a strong constitution and the poison had no noticeable effect on her.   On the Sunday morning after his first attempt at killing his wife, John tried again.  Knowing that she would pray in their bedroom in the morning, he sneaked in behind her with a length of rope in his hands.  As she prayed, he pounced, pulled the rope around her neck, and strangled her.  He then hung her lifeless body from a beam in the room, locked the door from inside, leaving the key in the lock and then slipped out of the bedroom window, shutting it behind him.  As the church bells rang, he walked through the graveyard greeting members of his congregation as they arrived. In the church he stood in the pulpit and gave a passionate sermon.

 

After the sermon was over, John invited several members of the congregation to come over to his house to eat there.  He told them that lately his wife had been very depressed, and it would cheer her up to have some company.  Off they went to the house where John called out to his wife, but there was no answer.  He then went to their bedroom and called out to his guests that the door was locked.  Then in front of them, he kicked the door open, and all saw poor Margaret hanging dead from the beam.  John collapsed to the ground sobbing as they cut Margaret down.  His tears of anguish seemed so real to those guests he’d invited in, that no one suspected anything other than Margaret had taken her own life.

 

For the first few days after Margaret’s death, John was a happy man.  He was free to marry again, maybe in a few months’ time he could propose to his widowed parishioner and then settle down to the life he deserved.  A life with money and property and status.  But then the gnarly issue came up of Margaret’s burial, as a suicide she could not be buried on consecrated ground and so she was instead buried in an unmarked grave in a nearby field.  Her reputation ruined and her soul damned forever, people no longer spoke of her, and her and John’s children were told to forget her.  The guilt of it all began to weigh heavy on John’s mind.  What had he done?  He began to remember the Margaret who he had loved and had loved him.  He remembered her terrified and disbelieving eyes looking up at him as he had killed her.  She had always trusted him, looked after him, believed in him and he had betrayed it all.  He had betrayed her, and he had betrayed his God.  After a few weeks John could take the guilt no more and so he set off to Edinburgh where he called on a judge and made a full confession to him.  John was then taken to the Tolbooth in Edinburgh to await trial.

 

John’s trial was a quick affair where he again made a full confession, was found guilty of the murder of his wife, and was sentenced to death.  On the 4^th of October 1570, John was taken to Gallow Lee on the outskirts of old Edinburgh.  There he preached his final sermon where he basically blamed Satan for making him do it, and then he was hanged.  Once dead, his body was cut down and burnt to ash.

 

After John Kello, Spott Church had many more Ministers, though no more who were murderers, murdered or executed.

 

I left the Skulferatu that accompanied me on my walk in a gap in a wall outside the church.

 

Skulferatu #108

 

Skulferatu #108 in a gap in the wall outside the church

 

Skulferatu #108 in a gap in the wall outside the church

 

Map showing the location of Skulferatu #108

 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are –

 

Latitude 55.9722

Longitude -2.524426

 

what3words: masses.flags.settle

 

I used the following sources for information on Spott Parish Church –

 

The Examiner

No.843, Sunday, March 28, 1894

 

Twelve Scots Trials

by William Roughead

1913

 

Spott Church Website

https://spottchurch.org.uk/

 

 

 

 

 

Skulferatu #106 - Innerwick Castle, Dunbar, East Lothian

The ruins of Innerwick Castle sit on a sandstone outcrop, above a steep, rocky ravine that drops down through Thornton Glen, to the shallow waters of Thornton burn.  On the other side of the glen once stood Thornton Castle, of which nothing now remains. Whether there was some strategic importance to the castles being so close together I don’t know, though they were near to the Great North Road that ran from London to Edinburgh, so maybe they were some sort of strongholds against the English army, that occasionally marched up that way to carry out an invasion or get up to some mischief making. 

 

Built in the 14^th Century, Innerwick Castle was once the stronghold of the Hamilton family, and the history of the castle, like that of many castles, is bloody and violent.  It fell into the hands of the English after their success at the battle of Homildon Hill in 1402.  Then, in 1406, it was besieged by the army of the Scottish nobleman, Robert Stewart, and was recaptured and destroyed.  A few years later it was rebuilt and appears to have enjoyed a period of prosperity when it was extended several times.

 

View of the ruins of Innerwick Castle

 

View of the ruins of Innerwick Castle

 

View of the ruins of Innerwick Castle

 

View of the ruins of Innerwick Castle

 

Sketch of Innerwick Castle from ‘The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland’

 

This period of peace and prosperity ended in the mid-16^th Century when Scotland and England became involved in a series of vicious and violent confrontations, known as the ‘Rough Wooing’.  During this time the English forces carried out a series of attacks and invasions into Scotland, in an attempt to compel the Scottish Parliament to confirm the terms of the Treaty of Greenwich.  This treaty, which had been agreed by Henry VIII of England and James Hamilton, the Regent of Scotland, included a proposal that Mary, Queen of Scots, and Henry’s son Edward should wed when they were of age.  However, the Scottish Parliament had rejected the treaty, much to Henry’s displeasure.    In 1547, Henry was dead, and his young son was King, though the real power lay with his Protector, Edward Seymour, the Duke of Somerset.  And Seymour, being an ambitious sort, decided it was time to get the treaty sorted, so he led an army into Scotland.   

 

On the 6th of September 1547, a unit of English hakbutters (men armed with an early form of musket) besieged Innerwick Castle. The castle was defended by the Master of Hamilton and eight other men.  They barricaded the doors, blocked up the stairs and defended from the castle battlements. However, the hakbutters blasted away at them with their guns, and managed to force their way into the vaults below. There they piled up straw and wood and set the castle ablaze.  Blinded and suffocated by the smoke, those defending the castle cried out for mercy, but the hakbutters burst through the doors onto the battlements and shot dead eight of them on the spot.  The ninth, who saw what fate had befallen his comrades, jumped from the castle battlements in a desperate effort to save himself, falling 70 feet down the ravine and into the river below.  Miraculously, he survived and on seeing this, the hakbutters above in the castle, allowed him to escape.  Unfortunately for the poor man, he ran towards nearby Thornton Castle, unaware that it too was being attacked by English troops.  On being spotted by them he was ‘slain’.  Shortly after his death, Thornton Castle also fell into the hands of the English troops who blew it up with gunpowder.

 

Innerwick Castle from ‘The Antiquities of Scotland’

 

View of the ruins of Innerwick Castle

 

View of the ruins of Innerwick Castle

 

View of the ruins of Innerwick Castle

 

View of the ruins of Innerwick Castle

Vaults at Innerwick Castle

 

Vaults at Innerwick Castle

 

Tree over entrance into the vaults

 

Vaults at Innerwick Castle

 

Hole in the wall

Stones in the wall

 

Graffiti on the vault walls

 

Vaults at Innerwick Castle

 

Though much of Innerwick Castle was badly damaged by the attack in 1547, parts of it must have been habitable, as in the 1650s the Covenanters used it as one of their bases from which they harassed and attacked Oliver Cromwell’s troops.  Later, in the 1820s, the castle was home to a local man called Sandy Cowe.  Living there on his own, he grew garden plants in parts of the castle and on its grounds, which he sold around the county.

 

The ruins of Innerwick Castle have been an inspiration for many artists from the amateur to the well-known.  In 1831, J.M.W. Turner was invited up to Edinburgh to meet up with Sir Walter Scott and his publisher, to discuss his illustrating of Scott’s Poetical Works.  On his way up, after a stop off at Berwick upon Tweed, he spent a couple of days in East Lothian sketching some of the ruined castles there.  One of these castles being Innerwick.  The series of sketches he drew are now held by the Tate.

 

J. M. W. Turner - Innerwick Castle, East Lothian, 1831, Photo © Tate

 

The land in which the castle sits in is now a nature reserve owned by the Scottish Wildlife Trust.  A steep, narrow, earth trodden path leads up to it, and it was up this path that I trudged on a fine, still day.  Ignoring the sign warning of the dangers of loose masonry, I made my way inside the castle and wandered through what remained of the vaults and once grand rooms.  I took in the views over Thornton Glen and then after my wanderings, left the Skulferatu that had accompanied me, in a gap in the wall of a swirling tower where a stairwell to the upper levels had once stood.

 

Skulferatu #106

Skulferatu #106 in the swirling stairwell tower

 

Skulferatu #106 in the swirling stairwell tower

 

Skulferatu #106 in a gap in the wall

 

Map showing location of Skulferatu #106

 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are –

 

Latitude 55.955625

Longitude -2.425939

 

what3words: aimlessly.stealthier.superhero

 

I used the following sources for information on Innerwick Castle –

 

Canmore

Innerwick Castle

 

The Antiquities of Scotland

by Francis Grose

1797

 

The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland from the Twelfth to the Eighteenth Century

Volume Three

by David MacGibbon and Thomas Ross

1889

 

Tudor Tracts 1532 - 1588

Of the Expedition into Scotland by William Patten

1903

 

The Autobiography of a Working Man

1848 

by Alexander Somerville

 

Tate

Innerwick Castle, East Lothian (d25977)

 

Landscapes of Memory 

Turner as Illustrator to Scott

by Gerald Finley

1980