Fortified place · Iron Age
Norman's Law Hillfort
Fife
Two concentric stone ramparts enclosing some four hectares — a community of real significance, not a watching post.
- Near Luthrie
- Rough ground
By type
Fortified places of Britain & Ireland
Hillforts, brochs, duns, Roman forts and castles — the defended places, from Iron Age ramparts to medieval stone.
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Fortified place · Medieval
Aberdour Castle and Gardens
Fife
One of the two oldest datable standing castles in Scotland (alongside Castle Sween), expanded over ~400 years from a c.1200 hall house to a Renaiss…
- Near Aberdour
- 46 metres from car park
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Fortified place · Roman
Antonine Wall: Rough Castle
Falkirk
Rough Castle was built as a Roman fort on the Antonine Wall, which dates from about AD 143. It stands against the southern rear face of the Wall, d…
- Near Bonnybridge
- 15 min walk from car park
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Roman
Bearsden Roman Bath House
East Dunbartonshire
The Romans built a stone-and-turf fortification, the Antonine Wall, between the Firth of Clyde and the Firth of Forth between AD 142 and 144 under…
- Near Bearsden
- 3 min walk from car park
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Fortified place · Roman
Birrens Roman Fort
Dumfries and Galloway
Several Roman camps lie near Birrens, at least one first occupied in the Flavian period from AD 79, probably during the Agricolan campaigns, when i…
- Near Middlebie
- 14 min walk from car park
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Broch of Mousa
Shetland Islands
The broch is thought to have been built around c. 300 BC, during the later Scottish Iron Age, as one of more than 500 brochs raised across Scotland.
- Near Sandwick
- 3.2 km from car park
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Burghead Fort
Moray
Burghead was one of the earliest power centres of the Picts and, at 12.4 acres, was three times the size of any other enclosed site in Early Mediev…
- Near Burghead
- 30 metres from car park
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Burnswark Hillfort and Roman Siege Camps
Dumfries and Galloway
An Iron Age hillfort enclosing some 7 hectares sat on the flat-topped basalt hill, alongside Iron Age roundhouses, an earlier Bronze Age burial cai…
- Near Ecclefechan
- 1.9 km from car park
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Cademuir Hill Fort
Scottish Borders
Two Iron Age forts crown the Cademuir ridge. The larger, Cademuir I, on the summit, enclosed about 2.25 ha within a single 3 m thick stone wall and…
- Near Peebles
- 2.3 km from car park
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Medieval
Cambuskenneth Abbey
Stirling
Cambuskenneth Abbey, a provostry of canons regular on land enclosed by a meander of the River Forth near Stirling, was founded by order of King Dav…
- Near Stirling
- 263 metres from car park
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Castle Law, Dumyat
Stirling
Dumyat is a hill (418 metres) at the western extremity of the Ochil Hills in central Scotland, with two principal summits: Castle Law on the west a…
- Near Blairlogie
- 947 metres from car park
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Medieval
Castle Sween
Argyll and Bute
Castle Sween, on the eastern shore of Loch Sween in Knapdale, Argyll, is thought to be one of the earliest stone castles built in Scotland — and is…
- Near Achnamara
- 466 metres from car park
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Dumbarton Castle and Dumbarton Rock
West Dunbartonshire
Dumbarton Castle has the longest recorded history of any stronghold in Scotland. It sits on Dumbarton Rock, a basalt volcanic plug 240 feet (73 m)…
- Near Dumbarton
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Dun Carloway Broch
Outer Hebrides
Most brochs were built between 100 BC and 100 AD; Dun Carloway was probably built in the 1st century AD and remained in use through the centuries u…
- Near Carloway
- 208 metres from car park
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Dunadd Fort
Argyll and Bute
Dunadd is a hillfort in Argyll and Bute, occupied from the Iron Age and into the early medieval period, and believed to have been the capital of th…
- Near Kilmartin
- 237 metres from car park
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Medieval
Dunnottar Castle
Aberdeenshire
The Annals of Ulster record two sieges of 'Dún Foither' in 681 and 694, possibly the earliest written references to the site; the 681 attack has be…
- Near Stonehaven
- 8 min walk from car park
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Edin's Hall Broch, Fort and Settlement
Scottish Borders
The hilltop on the northeast slope of Cockburn Law was first fortified in the pre-Roman Iron Age, when double ramparts and ditches enclosed an oval…
- Near Duns
- 1.8 km from car park
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Eildon Hill North Hillfort
Scottish Borders
Excavation has shown the hillfort was occupied by 1000 BC, in the Bronze Age, with ramparts built and rebuilt in three phases. The 296 hut platform…
- Near Melrose
- 1.7 km from car park
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Medieval
Smailholm Tower
Scottish Borders
Smailholm Tower is a peel tower atop the crag of Lady Hill, around five miles west of Kelso in the Scottish Borders. It was built in the 15th or ea…
- Near Smailholm
- 1 min walk from car park
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Tap o' Noth Hillfort
Aberdeenshire
Tap o' Noth is a hillfort on the summit of its hill in Aberdeenshire - the second highest fort in Scotland - whose principal feature is a well-pres…
- Near Rhynie
- 50 min walk from car park
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Medieval
Abernethy Round Tower
Perth and Kinross
One of just two surviving round towers in Scotland, it preserves in a single Irish-style shaft the layered history of Abernethy's early monastery a…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Affleck Castle
Angus
A remarkably intact fifteenth-century tower house whose surviving oratory, complete with piscina, aumbry and holy-water stoup, preserves a rare med…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Alloa Tower
Clackmannanshire
One of Scotland's oldest and largest surviving tower houses, Alloa Tower preserves a rare medieval timber roof and centuries of association with th…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Ardvreck Castle
Highland
A remote Highland tower house whose surrender of the Marquess of Montrose in 1650 ties this lochside ruin to one of the defining episodes of Scotla…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Armadale Castle
Highland
Armadale Castle is the historic seat of Clan Donald, whose Lordship of the Isles once ruled much of Scotland's western seaboard, and today anchors…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Balgonie Castle
Fife
Balgonie Castle preserves a rare fourteenth-century Fife tower house that was rescued from ruin and returned to use through a decades-long private…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Balvaird Castle
Perth and Kinross
An unusually refined late-fifteenth-century tower house whose carved detail marks it out among Scottish castles of its date.
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Fortified place · Medieval
Blackness Castle
Falkirk
One of Scotland's great artillery fortresses, Blackness served for centuries as a royal state prison and garrison guarding the Firth of Forth.
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Fortified place · Medieval
Blair Castle
Perth and Kinross
For over seven centuries Blair Castle has been the stronghold of the Earls and Dukes of Atholl, and it remains home to the Atholl Highlanders, repu…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Borthwick Castle
Midlothian
One of Scotland's most imposing and well-preserved medieval tower houses, Borthwick sheltered Mary, Queen of Scots during her flight of 1567 and st…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Braemar Castle
Aberdeenshire
Braemar Castle carries the full arc of Highland Jacobite history — built to police a clan, burned in the 1689 rising, then turned into a government…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Brodick Castle
North Ayrshire
Brodick Castle traces an unusually complete arc from a Bruce-era fortress through Hamilton tower house and Cromwellian garrison to a Victorian duca…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Buittle Castle
Dumfries and Galloway
Buittle Castle ties Galloway to the Balliol dynasty across several centuries, from Dervorguilla and a king of Scots to the college at Oxford that s…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Burleigh Castle
Perth and Kinross
A late-medieval Balfour tower house whose royal visitors and Jacobite-tinged family history trace the changing fortunes of a Scottish laird's line.
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Fortified place · Medieval
Caerlaverock Castle
Dumfries and Galloway
Its rare triangular moated plan, unique among British castles, encloses four centuries of Maxwell power and border warfare, from Edward I's siege o…
- Easy path
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Fortified place · Medieval
Cairnbulg Castle
Aberdeenshire
It traces an unbroken Fraser connection from the fourteenth century through ruin and restoration back into family hands, a rare continuity among Ab…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Cardoness Castle
Dumfries and Galloway
A well-preserved late-medieval tower house whose story of feud, execution and folklore captures the turbulent world of the Galloway lairds.
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Fortified place · Medieval
Carsluith Castle
Dumfries and Galloway
Its owners' stubborn Catholic loyalty, embodied by Gilbert Brown, the last abbot of Sweetheart Abbey, makes this Galloway tower house a window onto…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Castle Campbell
Clackmannanshire
A well-preserved tower house and Renaissance residence that served as a Lowland seat of the Campbell Earls of Argyll, one of Scotland's most powerf…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Castle Fraser
Aberdeenshire
Castle Fraser is regarded as one of the most elaborate surviving examples of the Scottish Z-plan tower house, its long 1575–1636 build preserving t…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Castle Law, Abernethy
Perth and Kinross
A scheduled-monument hillfort crowning the hill above Abernethy, one of medieval Scotland's seats of the Earls of Fife and Clan MacDuff.
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Fortified place · Medieval
Castle Law, Forgandenny
Perth and Kinross
A nationally scheduled hillfort whose double classification — contour fort and multiple-enclosure fort — preserves an unusually layered set of anci…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Castle Menzies
Perth and Kinross
It is the ancestral seat of the Clan Menzies and a rare surviving sixteenth-century Z-plan tower house, rescued from decline and restored by the cl…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Castle of Mey
Highland
Rescued from dereliction by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in 1952, this sixteenth-century Sinclair tower house is one of Scotland's most norther…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Castle Stalker
Argyll and Bute
A rare surviving west-Highland tower house set on its own tidal islet, whose ownership passed between the Stewarts of Appin and the Campbells befor…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Castle Tioram
Highland
Castle Tioram is the ancestral stronghold of Clanranald, deliberately burned by its own chief in 1715 to deny it to Hanoverian forces and left a ru…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Cawdor Castle
Highland
One of Scotland's enduring inhabited castles, Cawdor grew from a medieval Highland tower into the seat of the Thanes of Cawdor and carries a litera…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Cessford Castle
Scottish Borders
It was the principal stronghold of the Kerr family, among the most notorious of the Border Reivers, and its massive walls survive as a striking rec…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Claypotts Castle
Dundee City
It is one of Scotland's best-preserved 16th-century Z-plan tower houses, complete enough to show clearly how such a fortified residence was designed.
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Fortified place · Medieval
Comlongon Castle
Dumfries and Galloway
An exceptionally complete red sandstone tower house that preserves the Royal Arms of Scotland above its hearth and a dozen chambers built into the…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Corgarff Castle
Aberdeenshire
Few Scottish strongholds trace so clearly the arc from clan feud through Jacobite conflict to a government garrison policing the Highlands.
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Fortified place · Medieval
Craigievar Castle
Aberdeenshire
One of the best-preserved and most admired tower houses in Scotland, Craigievar is a refined expression of the Scottish Baronial style and has stoo…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Craigmillar Castle
City of Edinburgh
Craigmillar is one of Scotland's best-preserved medieval castles and is closely tied to the story of Mary, Queen of Scots and the plot against Lord…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Crail Castle
Fife
Crail Castle was a medieval royal residence and the administrative heart of one of Fife's ancient royal burghs, though almost nothing of it now sur…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Crathes Castle
Aberdeenshire
A sixteenth-century Burnett tower house whose rare Scottish Renaissance painted ceilings and 1702 Irish-yew topiary have survived largely intact in…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Crichton Castle
Midlothian
A Border-country stronghold whose plain outer walls conceal a rare Italian Renaissance courtyard facade, and whose owners shaped some of Scotland's…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Crookston Castle
Glasgow City
It was the first property ever taken into the care of the National Trust for Scotland, and ranks as the second-oldest building in Glasgow after its…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Cruggleton Castle
Dumfries and Galloway
It preserves the fragmentary remains of a medieval Galloway stronghold whose owners span the Lords of Galloway, the Comyns and the priory of Whithorn.
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Fortified place · Medieval
Dairsie Castle
Fife
A stronghold of the bishops of St Andrews that hosted a medieval Scottish parliament and sheltered the young James VI, later rebuilt from ruin.
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Fortified place · Medieval
Drochil Castle
Scottish Borders
An ambitious, never-completed retirement palace of Regent Morton, whose rare double-tenement plan makes it one of the more unusual late-sixteenth-c…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Drum Castle
Aberdeenshire
Drum Castle preserves one of Scotland's three oldest and least-altered medieval tower houses, held by a single family for over six and a half centu…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Drumlanrig Castle
Dumfries and Galloway
A rare pink-sandstone Renaissance palace built for the 1st Duke of Queensberry, holding part of the Buccleuch art collection with works by Rembrand…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Duart Castle
Argyll and Bute
The medieval stronghold and ancestral seat of Clan MacLean, reclaimed and restored by the clan's chief in 1911 after more than a century as a ruin.
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Fortified place · Medieval
Duffus Castle
Moray
Duffus Castle shows the rise and fall of a Norman-founded Moray lordship, from a twelfth-century timber motte to a stone tower undone by the very m…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Dunbar Castle
East Lothian
One of Scotland's most fought-over border fortresses, defended by Black Agnes against an English siege and later tied to the downfall of Mary, Quee…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Dunrobin Castle
Highland
Dunrobin is the ancestral seat of the Earls and Dukes of Sutherland and, at 189 rooms, the largest house in the northern Highlands, its Scottish Ba…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Dunscaith Castle
Highland
A ruined clan stronghold on Skye whose very name preserves its role in Gaelic and Irish legend as the fortress of the warrior-teacher Scathach.
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Fortified place · Medieval
Duntrune Castle
Argyll and Bute
By tradition the oldest continuously occupied castle on mainland Scotland, Duntrune joins thirteenth-century MacDougall walls to a seventeenth-cent…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Earl's Palace, Birsay
Orkney Islands
It is the ruined seat of Robert Stewart, 1st Earl of Orkney, an illegitimate son of James V, and a rare surviving example of a fortified sixteenth-…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Edinburgh Castle
City of Edinburgh
One of Scotland's most important strongholds and a seat of royal power for centuries, Edinburgh Castle claims to be the most besieged place in Grea…
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Medieval
Edzell Castle and Garden
Angus
Edzell's walled garden of 1604, ringed with carved panels of the planetary deities, liberal arts and cardinal virtues, is unique in Scotland and am…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Eilean Donan Castle
Highland
It is one of Scotland's most recognisable castles, a thirteenth-century Highland stronghold destroyed in the 1719 Jacobite rising and painstakingly…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Elibank Castle
Scottish Borders
A late-16th-century Borders fortified house whose Italianate terraced gardens, laid out after the Union of the Crowns, were counted among the grand…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Ethie Castle
Angus
It is a rare medieval castle continuously inhabited from monastic origins through cardinal, earls and clan chief, carrying with it the memory of Ca…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Falkland Palace
Fife
Falkland Palace was a favoured Renaissance residence of the Stewart kings, where James V died and his royal tennis court still stands as the oldest…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Fast Castle
Scottish Borders
A dramatically sited Borders stronghold whose repeated changes of hand trace the long violence of the Anglo-Scottish frontier, and whose ruins are…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Fatlips Castle
Scottish Borders
A sixteenth-century Border peel tower whose story runs from the region's turbulent reiving past through to its Victorian revival as a shooting lodg…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Finavon Castle
Angus
It preserves the seat of the Lindsay Earls of Crawford, among medieval Angus's foremost noble families, from their rise in 1375 to the loss of the…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Findlater Castle
Aberdeenshire
Findlater Castle is a dramatically sited cliff-top Ogilvy stronghold caught up in the sixteenth-century power struggles of Mary, Queen of Scots.
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Fortified place · Medieval
Floors Castle
Scottish Borders
Floors Castle is a Category A listed house whose Georgian core by William Adam and romantic Victorian remodelling by William Henry Playfair togethe…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Fort George
Highland
It is one of the finest and most complete artillery fortifications in Europe, built to secure the Highlands after the 1745 rising and still in mili…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Fyvie Castle
Aberdeenshire
Fyvie Castle preserves five centuries of Scottish baronial building in a single structure, each of its towers raised by a different family who held…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Glamis Castle
Angus
Home of the Lyon family since the fourteenth century, Glamis binds a medieval tower house to royal births, a notorious witchcraft trial and some of…
- Easy path
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Fortified place · Medieval
Glenbuchat Castle
Aberdeenshire
Glenbuchat is a well-preserved late sixteenth-century Z-plan tower house that records both the domestic ambitions and the defensive instincts of Ab…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Greenknowe Tower
Scottish Borders
A rare, largely intact survival of a small Borders laird's tower house that still retains its original iron yett and datestone, offering a vivid pi…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Hailes Castle
East Lothian
One of Scotland's oldest stone castles, its Hepburn owners bound it to the dramatic final days of Mary, Queen of Scots.
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Fortified place · Medieval
Hermitage Castle
Scottish Borders
A brooding Border stronghold whose walls witnessed centuries of frontier warfare, treachery and the famous ride of Mary, Queen of Scots.
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Fortified place · Medieval
Hoddom Castle
Dumfries and Galloway
Hoddom traces the arc of a Border stronghold — from a besieged sixteenth-century tower fought over during Mary, Queen of Scots' wars to a derelict…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Huntingtower Castle
Perth and Kinross
Huntingtower was the setting for the 1582 Raid of Ruthven, when Scottish nobles seized the young King James VI, and its closely paired towers gave…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Huntly Castle
Aberdeenshire
Its ruined palace preserves some of the finest heraldic stone carving in Scotland alongside six centuries of the Gordon family's turbulent history.
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Fortified place · Medieval
Inveraray Castle
Argyll and Bute
One of the earliest and most complete expressions of Gothic Revival architecture in Scotland, and the continuous seat of the Dukes of Argyll and Cl…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Inverlochy Castle
Highland
One of Scotland's earliest and best-preserved stone castles of enclosure, its regular thirteenth-century plan survives largely as the Comyns built it.
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Fortified place · Medieval
Inverness Castle
Highland
It marks a site fortified for close to a thousand years and bound up with pivotal moments of Highland and Scottish history, from Robert the Bruce t…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Kildrummy Castle
Aberdeenshire
As the medieval seat of the Earls of Mar and the scene of two significant sieges in the Wars of Scottish Independence, Kildrummy is one of eastern…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Lochmaben Castle
Dumfries and Galloway
Few Border strongholds trace the whole arc of the medieval Anglo-Scottish wars as directly as Lochmaben, held in turn by the Bruces of Annandale, t…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Lochranza Castle
North Ayrshire
A modest fortified tower house that carries four centuries of Scottish royal and noble history on the Isle of Arran, from the medieval Stewarts thr…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Luffness Castle
East Lothian
It preserves a rare occupied medieval tower house whose grounds still bear the trace of a 1549 Franco-Scottish fort thrown up during the Rough Wooing.
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Fortified place · Medieval
MacDuff's Castle
Fife
A fragmentary but evocative coastal ruin whose towers trace six centuries of Fife's ruling families, from the MacDuff earls to the Wemyss lairds.
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Fortified place · Medieval
Morton Castle
Dumfries and Galloway
A rare triangular medieval castle guarding the strategic Nith valley, later a Douglas hunting lodge and now a Scheduled Ancient Monument beside its…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Mote of Mark
Dumfries and Galloway
A rare early medieval power centre where a lord held sway as a master craftsman, its imported glass, pottery and Mediterranean wine amphora showing…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Muness Castle
Shetland Islands
As the most northerly fortified residence in the British Isles, Muness marks the furthest reach of late sixteenth-century Scottish tower-house buil…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Neidpath Castle
Scottish Borders
A well-preserved medieval L-plan tower house above the Tweed, Neidpath binds the Fraser and Hay families and carries centuries of Borders history,…
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Fortified place · Medieval
New Slains Castle
Aberdeenshire
A cliff-top seat of the Earls of Erroll for over three hundred years, its Scots Baronial ruin now weathering above the North Sea.
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Fortified place · Medieval
Noltland Castle
Orkney Islands
One of Orkney's finest surviving tower houses, a heavily gun-looped Z-plan castle built by a courtier of Mary, Queen of Scots, and left unfinished…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Orchardton Tower
Dumfries and Galloway
Orchardton Tower is the only cylindrical tower house in Scotland, a rare survival of a round form that had otherwise vanished from Scottish castle-…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Preston Tower, East Lothian
East Lothian
A layered tower house whose defensive medieval keep was crowned with Renaissance living quarters, then burnt repeatedly across a century of Scottis…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Repentance Tower
Dumfries and Galloway
A rare surviving Border beacon-tower, Repentance Tower embodies the sixteenth-century warning system that watched the western Marches for English i…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Roslin Castle
Midlothian
A Sinclair stronghold whose fifteenth-century scriptorium preserved the earliest surviving work of Scots prose, standing beside the famous Rosslyn…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Roxburgh Castle
Scottish Borders
One of the most fiercely contested strongholds of the Anglo-Scottish frontier, and the place where King James II of Scotland was killed by his own…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Sanquhar Castle
Dumfries and Galloway
It preserves the story of a medieval Dumfriesshire stronghold whose lavish royal welcome in 1617 ruined the family that held it.
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Fortified place · Medieval
Scalloway Castle
Shetland Islands
It is the imposing tower-house of Patrick Stewart, 2nd Earl of Orkney, whose harsh rule over Shetland ended on the scaffold, and it served as the m…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Scotstarvit Tower
Fife
A rare survival among Scottish tower houses, standing near-complete rather than ruined and tied to the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Inglis an…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Seagate Castle
North Ayrshire
It is a rare surviving sixteenth-century urban town house of a leading Ayrshire noble family, linked by tradition to a visit from Mary, Queen of Sc…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Sorbie Tower
Dumfries and Galloway
Sorbie Tower is the ancient seat of Clan Hannay — a late-sixteenth-century L-plan tower house that fell to ruin for two centuries before being retu…
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Fortified place · Medieval
St Andrews Castle
Fife
It is one of Scotland's most storied castles, residence of the bishops of the medieval church capital and a flashpoint of the Reformation, where Ca…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Tantallon Castle
East Lothian
It is the last of Scotland's great medieval curtain-wall castles, a red-sandstone stronghold of the powerful Douglas earls that endured repeated si…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Threave Castle
Dumfries and Galloway
An island stronghold of the Black Douglases, Threave was among the last great seats of that family to fall to the crown, and its early gun defences…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Tibbers Castle
Dumfries and Galloway
A stone castle first documented in 1298, Tibbers passed repeatedly between English and Scottish hands during the Wars of Independence, changing sid…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Tolquhon Castle
Aberdeenshire
A well-preserved example of a Scots Renaissance courtyard mansion, built more for domestic comfort and display than for defence.
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Fortified place · Medieval
Traquair House
Scottish Borders
Claimed to be the oldest continually inhabited house in Scotland, its walls trace an unbroken line from a medieval royal hunting seat through the S…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Urquhart Castle
Highland
One of Scotland's great medieval strongholds, Urquhart guarded the Great Glen through the Wars of Independence and centuries of Highland conflict b…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Yester Castle
East Lothian
Its subterranean Goblin Ha' is a rare surviving example of medieval Gothic vaulting, wrapped in centuries of local legend about its wizard builder.
More places
Briefer entries — recorded and worth knowing, with fuller pages to come.
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Fortified place · Medieval
Bothwell Castle
South Lanarkshire
Bothwell was among the most ambitious stone castles of thirteenth-century Scotland, and its ruins record a century of siege, slighting and rebuildi…
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Burton Fleming (archaeological site)
East Riding of Yorkshire
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Medieval
Culzean Castle
South Ayrshire
One of Robert Adam's finest country houses, Culzean pairs a cliff-top Firth of Clyde setting with interiors that helped define the Scottish neoclas…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Doune Castle
Stirling
A remarkably complete late-medieval Scottish castle built by one of the most powerful nobles of his day, later a royal residence and a witness to t…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Dundonald Castle
South Ayrshire
A rare surviving royal residence of the early Stewart kings, built to mark Robert II's accession in 1371 on a hilltop fortified since prehistory.
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Fortified place · Medieval
Dunure Castle
South Ayrshire
It was the ancient seat of the Kennedys and the scene of the notorious 1570 roasting of Crossraguel Abbey's commendator, one of the darker episodes…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Greenan Castle
South Ayrshire
Greenan Castle preserves layered defences from prehistoric fort to medieval tower on a single dramatic cliff-top site, and its walls witnessed one…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Stirling Castle
Stirling
Stirling Castle holds the finest surviving Renaissance royal architecture in the British Isles, raised by the Stewart kings on a crag that commande…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Turnberry Castle
South Ayrshire
Turnberry was the boyhood home of Robert the Bruce and a stage in his campaign to reclaim the Scottish crown.
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