Falkland Palace

Falkland Palace stands in the heart of Fife, its origins reaching back to a late twelfth-century royal hunting lodge that the Earls of Fife enlarged into a castle in the following century. The crown took possession in 1424, when James I acquired the property after the fall of the Albany Stewarts. Between 1497 and 1541, James IV and James V remade the medieval fortress as a Renaissance residence, and the South Quarter still shows the French influence of that work in its gunloops, paired chapel windows, decorative niches and carved statues. The entrance tower was finished in 1541 under master masons John Brownhill and Henry Bawtie. James V died at the palace in December 1542; his body lay in the Chapel Royal, dedicated to Saint Thomas the Apostle, for nearly a month before burial. The chapel remains an active Catholic parish church, its corbels carved with the instruments of the Passion. In 1541 James V built a tennis court here, described as the oldest still in use, and it continues to host play. The grounds extend across three hectares of gardens, orchards and deer park, redesigned by Percy Cane in the 1940s. Since 1952 the National Trust for Scotland has served as Deputy Keeper.