Findlater Castle

Findlater Castle clings to a cliff-edge some fifteen metres above the Moray Firth, near Sandend on the Aberdeenshire coast west of Banff. Its name is thought to come from Gaelic words meaning white cliff, a nod to the pale, quartz-bearing rock on which the ruins stand. A stronghold was first recorded here in 1246, and King Alexander III is noted as having carried out repairs in the 1260s. The surviving fabric belongs largely to a fourteenth-century rebuilding, after which Walter Ogilvy secured permission from James II in 1445 to rebuild the castle anew. For generations Findlater was the seat of the Ogilvy family. James Ogilvy served the households of Mary of Guise and Mary, Queen of Scots, but control of the castle was lost to John Gordon amid a family dispute. In September 1562 Mary sent artillery from Dunbar to besiege Findlater and dislodge Gordon, who was later executed following the Battle of Corrichie. The castle’s importance faded once the Ogilvys built Cullen House nearby as their new seat, and by the mid-seventeenth century it had fallen into decline. The ruins were designated a scheduled monument in 1969.