Crichton Castle

Crichton Castle is a ruined stronghold in Midlothian whose surviving ranges enclose a courtyard hiding one of the most surprising facades in Scotland. The oldest part is a tower house raised in the late fourteenth century by John de Crichton, a defensive residence of vaulted basement and hall above. His son William rose to become Lord Chancellor of Scotland and engineered the notorious ‘Black Dinner’ of 1440, at which the young sixth Earl of Douglas was seized and killed. When the Crichtons fell from favour, James IV granted the castle in 1488 to Patrick Hepburn, first Earl of Bothwell, and it passed through that turbulent line for a century. Mary, Queen of Scots stayed here in January 1562 for her half-brother’s wedding. The castle’s crowning feature came in the 1580s, when Francis Stewart, fifth Earl of Bothwell, added an Italian-influenced north range faced with diamond rustication, echoing the Palazzo dei Diamanti at Ferrara, and set behind it Scotland’s first scale-and-platt stair. Stewart was accused of witchcraft and forfeited his estates in 1592, after which the castle slid into neglect. Taken into state care in 1956, it is now managed by Historic Environment Scotland. Sir Walter Scott set part of Marmion here, and Turner painted its walls.