Showing posts with label Innerwick Castle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Innerwick Castle. Show all posts

Tuesday 10 October 2023

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 14th 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.

 

A photo of a jagged ruin of a red stone wall with trees on one side of it.  This is the first view of the remains of Innerwick Castle from the path leading up to it.  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
View of the ruins of Innerwick Castle

 

A photo of a ruin sitting on top of a red stone cliff.  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
View of the ruins of Innerwick Castle

 

A photo of a ruin sitting on top of a red stone cliff.  These being the remains of Innerwick Castle.  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
View of the ruins of Innerwick Castle

 

A photo of a ruin sitting on top of a red stone cliff.  The view is looking straight up underneath the rocks and the windows in the ruin and a gap in the rocks combine to make it look like a face.  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
View of the ruins of Innerwick Castle

 

A sketch of a ruined castle sitting atop a cliff.
Sketch of Innerwick Castle from ‘The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland’

 

This period of peace and prosperity ended in the mid-16th 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.

 

A print of a ruined castle atop a cliff.
Innerwick Castle from ‘The Antiquities of Scotland’

 

A photo of an overgrown area with a ruined red stone wall sticking out with various empty window spaces in it.  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
View of the ruins of Innerwick Castle

 

A photo of an overgrown area with a ruined red stone wall sticking out of it.  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
View of the ruins of Innerwick Castle

 

A photo of an overgrown jumble of red stones that must have once been part of the walls of Innerwick Castle.  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
View of the ruins of Innerwick Castle

 

A photo of a stone arch that is almost hidden by the green of surrounding trees.  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
View of the ruins of Innerwick Castle


A photo of a stone corridor with an old arched doorway in it.  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
Vaults at Innerwick Castle

 

A view through a ruined stone doorway into an overgrown area with another doorway in the distance.  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
Vaults at Innerwick Castle

 

A photo of a tangle of tree branches that almost look like roots.  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
Tree over entrance into the vaults

 

A photo of a stone walled room with an arched roof and a window at the far end.  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
Vaults at Innerwick Castle

 

A photo of a small green plant growing in a hole in the wall of the castle.  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
Hole in the wall


A photo of a red stone wall made up of lots of different sized and shaped stones.  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
Stones in the wall

 

A photo of some faded graffiti on a red stone in the wall.  It shows a smiling sun and the name Gael M.  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
Graffiti on the vault walls

 

A photo of a large, ruined stone arched room.  There is now no wall at the back and the view out from it is of lots of trees.   Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
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.

 

A sketch of Innerwick Castle sitting on the top of a cliff.
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.

 

A photo of a small ceramic skull being held up in front of the large, ruined stone arched room.  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
Skulferatu #106


A photo of a wall with an empty window low down and stones paced in the wall where steps would once have been.  In a gap in the wall, almost out of sight, sits a small ceramic skull (Skulferatu 106).  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
Skulferatu #106 in the swirling stairwell tower

 

A photo of a swirling wall with stones paced in the wall where steps would once have been.  In a gap in the wall, almost out of sight, sits a small ceramic skull (Skulferatu 106).  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
Skulferatu #106 in the swirling stairwell tower

 

A small ceramic skull (Skulferatu 106) sitting in a gap in a red stone in the wall of Innerwick Castle.  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
Skulferatu #106 in a gap in the wall

 

TomTom Map showing location of Skulferatu #106
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
 
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
 

Landscapes of Memory 
Turner as Illustrator to Scott
by Gerald Finley
1980