Fast Castle

Fast Castle clings to a narrow promontory on the Berwickshire coast, some four miles north-west of Coldingham, where cliffs of around forty-five metres fall away to the North Sea on either side. The setting is the defence: a stronghold reached only by a drawbridge thrown across a ravine and guarded by a barbican, with a pulley and basket to lower supplies to the water below. First recorded in 1333, the castle changed hands repeatedly across the turbulent Anglo-Scottish frontier. An English garrison held it in 1346; Patrick Dunbar recovered it for Scotland in 1410; and it was taken again during the Rough Wooing of 1547. Margaret Tudor lodged here in 1503 on her way to marry James IV, and Mary, Queen of Scots visited in 1566. For centuries the Home family controlled it, and George Home, 4th Lord Home, rebuilt the castle in 1522 after its destruction in 1515. It later passed to Robert Logan of Restalrig, who in 1594 engaged the mathematician John Napier to hunt for buried treasure within its walls; none was found. Little now survives beyond foundations and a stretch of the north-east wall. Sir Walter Scott is thought to have drawn on the ruin for the Wolf’s Crag of his novel The Bride of Lammermoor.