Roslin Castle

Roslin Castle stands on a rocky promontory above the River North Esk, only a few hundred metres from the celebrated Rosslyn Chapel and some nine miles south of Edinburgh. The Sinclair family, of French descent, fortified the site around 1280, though the surviving stronghold took shape in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Henry Sinclair, 2nd Earl of Orkney, raised a rectangular keep with rounded corners at the south-west angle, while the promontory’s steep sides gave natural protection on three flanks, approached across an artificial ditch and drawbridge. During the fifteenth century the castle held a scriptorium, home to the Rosslyn-Hay manuscript, thought to be the earliest surviving work of Scots prose. War left deep marks: the Earl of Hertford burned the place in 1544 during the Rough Wooing, Cromwell’s general Monck bombarded it in 1650, and a mob damaged it further in 1688. The east range, rebuilt in the late sixteenth century and given Renaissance carving in 1622, was restored by the architects Simpson and Brown between 1982 and 1988, and is now let as holiday accommodation through the Landmark Trust. Sir Walter Scott wove the castle into his poem Rosabelle, and it later appeared on screen in The Da Vinci Code.