Noltland Castle

Noltland Castle stands on the island of Westray in the Orkney Islands, a formidable tower house begun after Gilbert Balfour was granted the surrounding lands in 1560 by Adam Bothwell, Bishop of Orkney. Balfour served as Master of the Royal Household to Mary, Queen of Scots, and was implicated in the plot against her husband, Lord Darnley; he later fled Scotland and was executed in Sweden in 1576. His castle, raised largely in the later sixteenth century, was never fully completed. It follows the Z-plan, a rectangular main block with towers set at diagonally opposite corners, and is pierced by a remarkable number of gun-ports, a defensive display far exceeding any plausible threat. A broad internal staircase has been likened to the celebrated stair at Fyvie Castle in Aberdeenshire, while a courtyard was added to the south during the seventeenth century. Ownership passed through several hands, among them Patrick Stewart, Earl of Orkney, who seized the castle in 1598 before the Balfours regained it. During the wars of the mid-seventeenth century, Royalist officers sheltered here after their defeat at Carbisdale, and local Covenanters captured and burned the building. Recorded as a ruin by 1881, it passed into state care in 1911.