It was one of those days that promises
to be warm but ends up freezing your ears off.
I found this out as I went for a stroll around the slippery and sludgy mud
paths of Craiglockhart Hill. The higher
up I got, the more my ears stung with the cold breeze. If only I’d thought to bring a hat with me,
just in case. Coming down off the hill I
made my way over to the grounds of Napier University and the ruins of
Craiglockhart Castle.
Some castles are just ruins, others are completely
f*cked. Craiglockhart Castle is one of
the latter. Not much remains of the
castle now, it is just a crumbling square of stone walls with some
vegetation growing out of it. To be honest, it wasn’t really ever much of a castle, but was more just a small, four storey tower house with pretentions. Now only the first storey and part of the
second storey remain.
Not much is known about the history of the castle, and theories about it are that it was either built for the Kincaid family in
the 12th Century or in the 15th Century for the Lockharts
of Lee. Nobody really knows and its story is now lost in the mists of time.
I’m sure many interesting things happened here, intrigues, love affairs,
scandals, and deaths. Maybe it was even the site of the first contact
between man and traveller from outer space, but we will never know, as all the memories of this building are now gone. Gone with those who once lived here. Gone and forgotten.
And on that cheery note, I left the Skulferatu that accompanied me on my
walk in one of the many thousands of gaps and holes in the crumbling walls of
the castle.
The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu
are –
Latitude 55.919290
Longitude -3.238320
I used the following sources for
information on Craiglockhart Castle –
Canmore
Craiglockhart Castle |
Canmore
Gazetteer for Scotland
Craiglockhart Castle:
Overview of Craiglockhart Castle (scottish-places.info)
The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of
Scotland from the Twelfth to the Eighteenth Century
Volume Three
By David MacGibbon and Thomas Ross
1887
