Dunnottar Castle

Listen first. Wind comes off the North Sea and pulls at your jacket. Below you, waves break against the rock with a low, steady boom. Seabirds call from ledges you cannot quite see. Then the smell reaches you: salt, wet grass, and the cold mineral scent of stone that has been soaked by spray for a very long time. Ahead, on a flat-topped crag almost cut off from the mainland, the ruins of Dunnottar Castle sit against an open sky.

You are a short distance south of Stonehaven, on the coast of Aberdeenshire in northeast Scotland. The headland under the castle is joined to the cliffs by only a narrow neck of land. On three sides, the rock drops straight into the sea. Builders did not need a moat here. Nature gave them one. That single fact explains almost everything about this place: why people fought over it, why they hid treasure in it, and why it held out for so long.

Look closely at the rock itself as you walk down the path. It is not smooth. It is full of rounded pebbles and cobbles, set in a darker matrix like fruit in a cake. Geologists call this conglomerate, and locals often call it puddingstone. It formed hundreds of millions of years ago from river gravels. The same lumpy stone makes up much of this coast, so the castle and the cliff seem to grow out of each other.

People used this rock long before the walls you see today. Legend has it that Saint Ninian, an early Christian missionary, founded a chapel here around the fifth century. That story is tradition, not proven history. What is better recorded is that the headland was a stronghold in the early medieval period, and that it changed hands more than once during the wars between Scotland and England.

One of those episodes involves William Wallace, the Scottish leader of the late thirteenth century. According to the account of a later poet, Wallace attacked an English garrison here in 1297 and set fire to the church where soldiers had taken refuge. The poem was written long after the events, so historians treat its details with caution. Still, the story shows how deeply Dunnottar is tied to Scotland's memory of its independence wars.

The castle you are walking toward belongs mostly to one family — the Keiths. They held the hereditary title of Earl Marischal, which made them responsible for the royal household and for ceremonies of state. The tall tower house near the entrance dates from around the late fourteenth century. Over the next two hundred years, the Keiths added ranges of buildings, turning a hard military rock into something closer to a clifftop palace.

As you climb toward the gatehouse, notice how the approach works. The path forces you up a narrow, steep route, under walls that look straight down on you. Then you pass through a tunnel in the rock. Look for the small openings in the gatehouse walls. These were gun loops, placed so that defenders could fire at anyone coming up the path. Even today, the climb leaves you a little out of breath — and that was the point.

Now for the story that most visitors come for. In the middle of the seventeenth century, Oliver Cromwell's army invaded Scotland. The Honours of Scotland — the crown, the sceptre, and the sword of state — were brought here for safekeeping. These are the oldest crown jewels in Britain. Cromwell's forces besieged Dunnottar for about eight months. The small garrison finally surrendered in 1652. But when the soldiers came in, the Honours were gone.

How did they leave? Tradition credits two women in particular. The most popular version says that Christian Grainger, the wife of the minister at nearby Kinneff, carried them out under the noses of the besiegers, hidden among her belongings or bundles of flax. Accounts differ on the exact method. What is agreed is that the regalia were buried beneath the floor of Kinneff church, a few miles down the coast, and stayed hidden until the monarchy returned. Today they are displayed at Edinburgh Castle.

Here is a darker chapter that many visitors walk past without noticing. Find the room known as the Whigs' Vault. In 1685, during a period of religious conflict, a large group of Covenanters — Presbyterians who refused to accept the king's control over their church — were held here in cramped conditions through the summer. Some died. Some tried to escape down the cliffs. A memorial in the Dunnottar churchyard, back toward Stonehaven, remembers them.

The end of Dunnottar as a home came with politics. The last Earl Marischal supported the Jacobite rising of 1715, which tried to restore the exiled Stuart line to the throne. The rising failed, the family lost its estates, and the castle was stripped and left to decay. Roofs came off. Stone was carried away. For two centuries the wind had the place to itself. Restoration work began in the 1920s, and the site has been cared for ever since.

Walk through the palace ranges along the north side. Look up and you can still see where floors once rested, and the outlines of fireplaces high on the walls. One room, the drawing room, has been restored with a timber ceiling, so you can imagine how these spaces felt when they were lived in. Then step to the edge and look out. Filmmakers have noticed this view too. Franco Zeffirelli used the castle for his 1990 film of Hamlet.

Before you leave, stand still for a minute near the cliff edge, at a safe distance. Watch the fulmars glide on stiff wings along the rock face. Notice how quickly the light changes as clouds move across the sea. Behind you are walls that sheltered a nation's crown, held prisoners, and housed one of Scotland's great families. In front of you is only water and sky. As you climb back up the path toward the car park, turn around once more. The castle looks smaller from there — and somehow more alone.