Secrets of Dunnottar Castle | Scotland’s Most Incredible Fortress

Another day in another of Scotland's beautiful castles. Welcome to the clifftop ruins of Dunottar Castle, near Stonehaven in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. No matter how many times I visit Dunottar Castle, it never fails to take my breath away. So for someone visiting it for the first time, it must be absolutely mind-blowing. In this video, I'm going to take you around the castle and tell you about some of its spectacular history, and hopefully you'll see why it's one of my favourite castles in Scotland. So let's go and have a look around this incredible castle. And we have arrived. Welcome to Dunottar Castle. You're met by this sign next to the car park. Ticket prices at the moment, this is £20.26, £13 for adults, but you'll see they do family tickets. And also they do an annual pass, which is incredibly good value for money. From the car park, it's a relatively short walk along this gravel path to get to the upper cliffs of Dunottar Castle. You can just make the castle out in the distance. And people have been living on this headland since around 400 AD, and I'm sure that once you see it, you'll understand why it's one of my favourite castles in Scotland. Before we get to the main stairs of the castle, I've taken the right-hand path, and I just want to show you the beautiful view that you get through this little valley of Dunottar Castle. And from here, you will cross over a little bridge onto the other side, and then we'll follow that headland around the right-hand side. Now the path here carries on for well in excess of half a mile. It's possible to skirt all the way around the clifftops, and you don't even need to pay any money to do this part. You only need to pay if you want to go into the castle itself. And there you go, the first of many incredible views of Dunottar Castle. Now often you arrive here in the morning, it'll be very misty and very cloudy because we're close to the coast, to the North Sea, but that usually burns off, and quite often you get two different castles in one day. Okay, that's us back to where the path split, and up ahead another phenomenal view of the castle. So the belief is that an early Christian mission station or church was founded here by Saint Ninian around 400 AD. By 900 AD, it had become the first of several fortresses. And now for the tough bit, the climb down into the valley below. And that is me, all the way down to the bottom. It's pretty easy coming down, but you've got to remember, you've got to get all the way back up again when you're finished. Either side of the castle there's a natural bay which would have been used as harbours back in the day. And in both sides there are caves as well. There's one on this side, just off to the right hand side. But the geology here is quite remarkable as well. It's what's called pudding stain. It's around about 440 million years old. It's a type of sand and rounded pebble conglomerate which is as hard as concrete. So it must have taken a hell of a lot of effort to tunnel all the way through this hillside to make an access point. And you would think it would be pretty brittle, but in actual fact it is incredibly difficult to tunnel through. And it meant that this castle was incredibly difficult to attack. There's only one way in, the front door. Now we don't know when the first castle was built here at Denotter, but we do know that in 900 AD the Vikings raided Denotter. Because in the process they killed the then King of Scotland, King Donald II. So we're assuming that by that point it was some sort of fortress. We also know that the English captured the castle in 1296. And then William Wallace, the famous Scottish freedom fighter captured the castle back from the English the following year in 1297. We also know that Mary Queen of Scots visited and stayed at the castle. And we also know that Oliver Cromwell's army laid siege to the castle in the 1650s. So this castle is absolutely steeped in history. Now the first stone castle was built here around the 1390s. And it was built by a family called the Keiths. They became the Marischals. And they were one of the most prominent wealthy and powerful families in Scotland. And this is the gateway. All those little holes are not to give you a warm welcome. If you're still alive by the time you've got all the way up here, then you've got to fight your way into the castle itself. This three-story building to the right of the main entrance is known as Benham's Lodgings. And it strengthened the external defences. You can see the door used to be bigger. It was reduced in size probably around the 1600s to make it even more difficult to break in. With a portcullis that would drop down from above. To the left hand side is what would have been the powder magazine. Those four little holes off to our right hand side. As soon as you burst through that door there are more firing loops. And then to the right would take you through into Benham's Lodgings. So bristling with gunfire. If you were a would-be attacker, then you were funneled into what were called the pens. These two little narrow alleys with high banks on both sides. And you would have missiles and weapons and gunfire rain down upon you. We though, are going to take a little different route. We're going to head along the walls up to the building at the top there which is called the keep past Benham's Lodgings. And before we make it there we'll have a little look over the wall because you get better and better and better views the further you get into the castle. This building again off to the left with all the gun loops in it is Benham's Lodging which we'll go and have a look at on the first floor where the white windows are. And it's believed to have been reconstructed around 1581. In the distance on the cliffs is a memorial to local men who died during the Great War, World War 1. As we head back along the wall now just above the gatehouse this area down to the left a little hollow carved into the side of the hill is called the Lion's Den. Because in the 1500s one of the Errol Maréchals apparently owned a pet lion which he kept here. Apparently there was also a bear called Blackbeard at some point too. So into Benham's Lodgings which is named after a man called Keith. Keith of Benholm and he was the son of one of the Maréchals. So today it houses kind of like a museum. It tells you about the history of the castle, the honours of Scotland which are the Scottish crown jewels which were hidden here from Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s. Sneaked out of the castle but more on that later. Spoiler alert. And incredible views down below as well. There's also a little model that shows you how the castle looked in its prime with castles, castles with cannons even bristling around all the sides pointing inward and outward. As you walk back up the stairs here you come to an iron grill which protects a secondary entrance into the castle which is called a Posterngate. And this was where William Wallace gains entry to the castle in 1297 when it was held by the English. He scaled up the cliffs, he came through this little door down here which was unprotected and then he made it into the gatehouse from where he was able to open the doors and his small band of soldiers outside were able to storm the castle catching the English completely off guard. And unfortunately for them every man, woman and child in the castle was apparently packed into the church and burned alive. Next up is the Keep. So this is the most prominent building on Castle Rock. I have to keep turning the video on and off because there are other people here. I don't just have this all to myself. But before we go into the Keep here's the second bay down below. So you can see the promontory on the far side there, the top of the cliffs. That's where I was before and down in the corner you can see the tunnel that we saw as we climbed up the steps. So there would have been boats, ships coming in here unloading goods and probably some sort of pulley system to help get them up onto the top of the cliffs. This building's undergone a lot of different uses over the years. This ground floor was a kitchen and then from there we can move on up these stairs which takes us up to the first floor and this takes us up to what would have been the grandest rooms. A place for meals, for celebrations, somewhere for trials, an administrative centre because the the Keiths, the Marischals were responsible for law and order in a huge amount of land. Beautiful windows on all sides. As you can see the roof has long gone but it doesn't take a lot of imagination to think what this would have looked like with a roaring fireplace and stunning views from every angle. I love these little window seats to let as much natural light in as possible so you could sit here with a book or parchment and read using some natural light looking out over your kingdom beyond. Directly above there would have been a second and third floors which would have held the master bedroom and the chambers for the most important people, the Keiths or the Marischals. Back outside from the keep you've got multiple buildings here which would have served as storehouses. You've also got the remnants of what would have been a smithy, a blacksmith's and they would have been responsible for shoeing horses, for all kinds of metal work that was needed in and around the castle for repairs, for building items and then through these doors here you would have been into the stables. Now they're not the biggest stables in the world. Suggestions are that possibly there was somewhere between 10 and 15 horses but at least they had a nice view so it would have been the sort of lord and the most important people within the castle whose horses would be stabled here and they had different horses for different functions from war horses to agricultural horses and also to what we would call palfreys, sort of leisure horses which were generally smaller and there would have also been stable hands who would have lived here. It would have been used by various grooms. There would undoubtedly have been a sort of stable manager of some description who would have lived in the cottage on the far end there and then you had to have all the food for all the horses as well. You have to remember when you're in a castle the best way to get someone out of a castle is to starve them out so you need to have a huge amount of stores so if your castle is besieged you could be in here for months or even years and this little drawing shows you roughly what they think it would have looked like back in its prime and through this little doorway again would have been a residence, someone of relatively high status, multiple fireplaces, several floors and even without a roof. Again you can see it's a pretty substantial building. Originally the roof was probably thatch. Slate wasn't really a common thing even in castles and it was also quite heavy and expensive but they did again have lovely views down over the bay below. It's the one thing about this castle, every window you pop your head out, every corner you look around you've just got endless views and as I say you can walk all the way along those headlands and the view of the castle changes every single time. It is a truly magical place. This little ruin building over here is a little bit out of keeping with the rest of the site. It's a little self-contained two-storey house that stands right slap bang in the middle of the castle and there's a little story, who knows if it's true, but it's a good story that apparently the fourth Earl Marischal had a son called William who was the master of Marischal and he and his wife Elizabeth apparently used to live here. The story goes that he couldn't get rid of them. Many of you might have kids that are a bit like that as well. They're unwilling to move out the house so it seems like the Earl wanted a little bit of privacy as possibly did they. So apparently he built this little standalone house for them. So they were out of his house but they had their own space. This little open area here between here and the quadrangle apparently served as a cemetery. Now there's only one grave that's marked which is quite well worn but it suggests that it dates to around 1685 and that it's a child or a bairn that's buried there. From there you can see the chapel just up ahead but before we get there we'll cut around into this area here which is called the quadrangle. You've got three ranges of buildings which had all different purposes and needs but primarily these were accommodation mostly but they did change all the time depending on the political climate even at the time but for a period one of the rooms was actually used as a ballroom. You've also got in the centre here what's called the great cistern. This was the water supply for the castle. Now I don't think you'd be very keen on drinking out of it today but it's pretty huge. It measures somewhere in the region of about 35 feet in diameter and it's about 25 feet deep but it's not fed by a spring. It just collected the rainwater off the roofs and they would then brew that water into what was called small beer and the brewing process would kill any bacteria so it didn't kill you. Now speaking of killing, now this is the chapel and this is a later chapel. This is believed to have been built sometime in the 1500s but it replaced an original church which was consecrated in 1276 and it's believed that this is the site where Sir William Wallace, our famous freedom fighter, Braveheart in a certain movie which weirdly is what Robert the Bruce was referred to. An Australian-American actor just stole that name to give his movie a name but this is apparently where William Wallace packed the entire English garrison into the castle before he then burned them alive having captured the castle in 1297. This is the east range then the Marischal Suites then the north and west ranges. We'll head into the west range first which is a accommodation block effectively. When you go inside it's split into seven different chambers which are all equal sizes and there was a floor directly above which was a gallery which would be used for dancing effectively like a big ballroom and opposing ends would have been withdrawing rooms so a kind of a nice comfortable living room. So this would have been for visitors to the castle but possibly also for servants to stay in as well. Back across the quadrangle past the cistern which apparently there were archaeological investigations done in the cistern. They drained it quite a few years ago. They found all sorts pots and pans, cutlery, a sword, musket balls, smoking pipes, so there was all kinds of stuff down there over the years. This takes us through into the north range where you've got these huge vaulted ceilings because they're supporting the upper suites of the north range and also the Marischal Suites. In here it takes us through into the kitchens and thankfully out of the wind. These date to probably sometime in the 16th or 17th century probably after about 1550 1580 and look at this for a fireplace it's 15 well it's not a fireplace it's an oven it measures 15 feet wide by about 12 feet in depth and in the corner here would have been bread ovens for baking and look at that for a chimney I mean you could get a whole forest in here well you probably need to in order to in order to get it up to temperature but you could get a whole highland cow in here as well and again though lovely views. I'm sure they would have needed the ventilation because the heat in here would have been incredible but that heat would been absorbed absorbed even by these big thick stone walls so undoubtedly the apartments directly above when the when the ovens were lit would have probably been pretty snug quite comfy. Next up we've got the basements of the east range so we're directly below what's called the Countess suite because the Count and the Countess would have separate sleeping apartments. This is three rooms interconnected which were the most important rooms in the house because one of them is where they brewed the beer that's this one here at the far end is the bakehouse that's where they would have baked the bread and the first room that we came in is where they would have stored a lot of the dry goods like grain and barley for using to bake bread and to brew beer. This is also said to be the most haunted part of the castle so with that let's get out of here as quick as we can because I'm a little bit superstitious but apparently people have reported sightings of a woman of a soldier and even of a great big dog. Now somewhere over in that direction across the North Sea is Norway probably about 350 miles away. Now never mind the ghosts of the brew house This is the Wiggs vault. Now this is a seriously dark place within the castle. In 1685 this was used as a prison at the height of a period known as the Killing Times. A group of people who were persecuted for their religious beliefs known as the Covenanters. Now of the 160 plus people that were kept here there were 122 men, 45 women and some children. Now several of them managed to escape. There was originally a huge big barred window here. Several managed to escape. I think it was about 25. They managed to abseil down the cliffs. Apparently a couple fell to their death but most of them were rounded up and eventually they were all shipped off to the West Indies on a penal ship where most of them died a miserable death. It's amazing with the history of persecution and murder that we have in Scotland that people often say oh Scottish people are just so friendly. We didn't always used to be as you can see with some of the stories and bear in mind this is just one castle and so far it's just been filled with murder and mayhem. But back to the quadrangle beautiful views over towards the chapel and the cistern where the beer comes from. Right let's have a look at the Marischal Suites. Now this takes us into the Marischal Suites and the East Range and these were the most opulent rooms built within the castle. They were amongst the last ever constructed as well. They were built sometime around the early 1600s by the 5th Earl Marischal. These would have been his apartments, his wife's apartments, would have been next door. Nice dog. And then beautiful views out over the sea as well. Now these were literally fit for a king because we know that in July 1650 King Charles II visited Dunnottar Castle and he would have stayed in these very apartments. What incredible views. To give you a little bit more history about the Keiths who were the Earl's Marischal. Who were they and what were they? Well they appear on the records in the 12th century and we know that they rise in prominence through the 1300s when they fight for King Robert the Bruce at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. Now they get the title the Earl Marischal and that comes with great responsibility because that means that they're responsible for the Royal Regalia, what we today would call the Crown Jewels. This next room references the saving of the honours of Scotland, the Crown Jewels of Scotland. Following the beheading of Charles I in 1649, the Scots declare his son Charles II as king. He's crowned in 1651 at Scudan Palace in Perthshire and then the honours of Scotland, the Crown Jewels are brought here to Dunnottar Castle for safekeeping. The castle is besieged through 1651 into 1652 and the Keiths manage to hide the Crown Jewels from Oliver Cromwell. They're eventually snuck out of the castle, down the cliffs and buried under the floor of a nearby church. Despite saving the Crown Jewels, unfortunately it didn't end well for the Keiths. The 10th Earl Marischal in 1715 backed the Jacobite Rebellion and after the Battle of he was effectively declared an outlaw. He forfeited his lands, he lost his estates and along with that he lost Dunnottar Castle. In the following years the castle was stripped of all its assets which were sold off, that changed hands countless times and eventually in 1919 it was bought for around about £100,000 by the Viscount Cowdery and it remains with that family to this day. Right, time to climb the hill and now for the hardest bit, the climb back up from the castle. It's not that bad, you can take your time, it has got a little bit windy though but you can always use the excuse I'm just stopping to look at the view and what a view! Well I hope you all enjoyed my little virtual tour around the incredible Dunnottar Castle. I'd appreciate if you did, if you could give the video a little thumbs up, if you could give me a hype that would be brilliant too and if you're not already subscribed to the channel then please hit the button and help support the channel's growth. So thank you all for watching and I look forward to seeing you all on my next virtual tour, see you soon.