I see Historic Scotland are opening Smailholm Tower again after a long break because of Covid. Smailholm is my favourite tower, and is situated in a commanding position about 5 miles northwest of Kelso in the Scottish Borders.
Smailholm was built by the Pringles, who were then squires of the Black Douglases, on land granted to them by the 4th Earl of Douglas. As a result the Douglas heart motif is carved into a column by the fireplace in the great hall. The tower would have been built in the first half of the 15th century, before the Black Douglas dynasty fell.
Smailholm had to fight off several English raids in the mid-16th century and was defended by the Covenanters against the Royalists in the 17th century. By the late 18th century it was a property of Sir Walter Scott’s family, and he spent some of his childhood in the farm near the tower. This period helped Scott develop his interest in Scottish history. Scott loved the tower and in later life arranged for it to be drawn by Turner.
A few photos of the tower.
The tower from my new drone, in its beautiful but rather bleak landscape.The Douglas heart motif in the fireplace in Smailholm’s hall.
We visited Jedburgh in the Scottish Borders today. This Thursday after Shrove Tuesday the locals play Jedburgh Hand Ball in the main street.
This tradition has gone on for hundreds of years. There are two teams, the Uppies who live north of the Market Cross, and the Downies who live south of the Market Cross. Traditionally it was played with an English soldier’s head, but in more recent years in the absence of readily available English heads they have had to resort to a ball with a ribbon to represent the hair. The object is for one of the teams to get the head/ball to their part of the town.
When we arrived at about 11a.m. the game was being played by hoards of boys, rampaging up and down the street. All the shop windows were boarded up, and for good reason. They were slammed into by groups of players.
At 2p.m. the adult game began. Far fewer participants, but just as violent. But the boys game didn’t stop, this continued in parallel. The boys would have been playing for 3 hours by then. There were far fewer men than boys, but the men’s game was just as violent.
In other cultures the players would have had protective headgear, and arm and knee pads at least. They were playing in the street with hard cement pavements and roads. But this is the Scottish Borders, and protective gear is for wimps!
I do sometimes wonder if it is a good idea to maintain all traditions!
A rather more sedate picture. A heron I photographed in the Jed Water in Jedburgh later in the day.
Earlier this week I visited the Hirsel for the first time. I wanted to go there because of the strong Douglas connections. The Hirsel is the Earl of Home’s estate on the outskirts of Coldstream on the Scottish border. The house isn’t open to the public, but much of the estate is. And there is an excellent tearoom in the grounds – great coffee and scones!
A bit about the history and how the Earl of Home became Douglas-Home.
The Hirsel house isn’t open to visitors, but there are many walks in the estate.
The story really start in the 18th century, with the 1st Duke of Douglas. The Duke was prickly, eccentric and as he grew older probably a bit insane.
He had a vehement disagreement with his sister, Lady Jane Douglas, when she married Captain Francis Stewart, who he considered beneath their social status. Jane married late at forty-eight, and as the Duke stopped her allowance the couple went abroad to escape their creditors. In 1748 Jane claimed to have given birth to twins in France at the age of forty-nine. Jane and one of the twins died in 1753, but the other twin, Archibald, survived. There was a dispute as to whether he was really her son. If the boy was the only nephew of the childless Duke he might inherit the vast Douglas estates, but could not inherit the dukedom as it could only be inherited by a direct descendent.
The Duke was to remain unmarried until he was in his mid sixties in 1758, when he seems to have been rather snared by a distant relative, Margaret Douglas. Margaret supported the boy’s claim to be the Duke’s nephew and set about trying to persuade her husband. Samuel Johnson (writer, creator the the first English dictionary) met the duchess during his tour of Scotland, and described her as ‘an old lady who talks broad Scotch with a paralytic voice and is scarce understood by her own countrymen’. She sounds like an interesting character to me! In time the Duke became reconciled to the boy as his legitimate heir, or perhaps was worn down by his wife. In 1761, only 10 days before he died, he changed his will to leave his estates to the lad.
The Duke’s decision to leave his wealth to the boy created a great schism with the Hamilton dynasty. The Duke of Hamilton was related to the Duke of Douglas. It had been expected that the 7th Duke of Hamilton, who was only a child at the time but was vastly rich in his own right, would inherit the Douglas wealth as well. This resulted in the Douglas Cause, which was Scotland’s most notorious and expensive civil legal case ever, a 15 year legal battle between the Hamiltons and the representatives of Archibald. The boy was looked after by Charles Douglas, the 3rd Duke of Queensberry, who by all accounts was one of the kinder and more admirable senior Douglases of the time.
The Hamilton party sent lawyers to France, who investigate for four years, and concluded that Archibald was the son of a glass blower, and had been stolen as a baby. His deceased brother they believed had been the son of a rope dancer (you couldn’t make this up). Initially the boy’s case to inherit the Douglas estates was lost in Scotland, seven judges finding in favour and seven against, the casting vote of the president of the jury going against the boy. The case was a cause célèbre, with the aristocracy split but the majority in favour of the Duke of Hamilton, but ordinary people were largely in favour of the boy. The Duke of Hamilton was already very rich, and probably because of that elicited little public sympathy compared to a boy who was by then an orphan. There was a great deal of unrest in the streets when the verdict against the boy’s claim was given. Many judges who had voted against the boy had their houses stoned and their windows broken.
Eventually the case went to the supreme court in London, and after another lengthy legal battle Archibald won. Of course the lawyers were also great winners, having benefited from huge fees. Archibald inherited the great Douglas estates, but could not inherit the ducal title, which died with the 1st Duke of Douglas. Archibald changed his surname from his father’s name of Stewart to his mother’s maiden name of Douglas, and became the 1st Baron Douglas.
Although Archibald married twice and had 12 children, only one, his eldest daughter Jane, gave him grandchildren. When Archibald’s male children died, Jane inherited the great Douglas estates.
Jane had four daughters. The eldest, Lady Lucy Elizabeth Scott, married the future 11th Earl of Home in 1832. Lucy brought the significant Douglas inheritance, including estates in Douglas to the Home family, who then amended their name to Douglas-Home. In the 20th century one of the Douglas-Home Earls of Home, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, was to be Prime Minister.
Before inheriting the title Sir Alec was Member of Parliament for Lanark, and for a time served as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. This took Sir Alec to Munich in 1938, to the historic meeting between Chamberlain and Hitler.
A photo of Sir Alec when he was Prime Minister.
When Sir Alec became 14th Earl of Home in 1951 on the death of his father he could not sit in the House of Commons but automatically had a place in the House of Lords. For a time he was leader of the Conservative party in the House of Lords. When Prime Minister Harold Macmillan resigned on the grounds of ill health in 1963, the Conservative party opted for Sir Alec as Prime Minister. This presented a problem. By 1963 it had become accepted practice for the British Prime Minister to sit in the elected House of Commons rather than the unelected House of Lords. Shortly before he became Prime Minister the MP for the safe Conservative seat of Kinross and West Perthshire had died, so Sir Alec disclaimed his peerage and stood for the seat. For over two weeks, between resigning the peerage and wining the seat, the British Prime Minister was neither a member of the House of Commons or the House of Lords!
Sir Alec was only Prime Minister for 363 days. He was require to call an election in 1964, which the Conservatives very narrowly lost. This was largely because of the Profumo affair, a scandal in the 1960s when John Profumo, Secretary the State for War in the Macmillan government, was revealed to be having an affair with 19 year old model Christine Keeler, who might also have been in a relationship with the Russian naval attaché in London.
Sir Alec was a team player and rather than snipe at future Conservative Prime Ministers was happy to serve as Foreign Secretary in later governments. Sir Alec seems to have been a gentleman by inclination as well as birth.
A statue of Sir Alec as you enter the grounds.
On his death the Earl of Home title was reinstated and inherited by Sir Alec’s son.
I visited Melrose Abbey today. Unfortunately it was not possible to get inside the abbey because Historic Scotland are checking the stability of the building. However I did get to walk round the outside, and took some pictures of the gargoyles, including the famous pig playing the bagpipes.
The Abbey, with the Eildon Hills behind.The famous pig playing the bagpipes.Some of the more normal gargoyles.
In these winter days of early darkness (dark around 4pm in Scotland) and Covid, I thought you might enjoy this photo that I took in early November. The bridge is colloquially known as the bridge to nowhere. It is near Dunbar in south east Scotland, and crosses a river that runs between Dunbar and its beach. But for about half an hour before and after high tide the path to the bridge is under water. I think the two ladies crossing it were going wild swimming – rather them than me in winter!
Newark Castle is a little-known Black Douglas castle in a beautiful location in the valley of the Yarrow Water. It is in the Duke of Buccleuch’s Bowhill estate 4 miles west of Selkirk in the Scottish borders. The castle is on a minor road in the very substantial estate that surrounds the house.
Newark is in a beautiful location
Newark is a major five storey tower house castle. Not quite as impressive as the Black Douglases’ Threave Castle but quite close. The castle was built in the 1420s for Archibald Douglas, Earl of Wigtown. Newark was the main Douglas castle in the Ettrick Forest, which the Douglases were lords of. Newark derives from “new work”. The castle probably replaced an older structure in the same general area.
As can be seen the tower is now roofless. Sections of the castle’s outer wall which surrounded the tower house survive, and gunholes for cannon are clearly visible in the outer wall. Historians suggest the outer wall was built in the 1450s, which was the time the Douglases were in conflict with James II, and therefore were preparing for war. The tower house is locked, but you can walk around the outside of the building.
It was only to remain in Douglas hands for around 30 years until 1455, when the Black Douglases fell and were disinherited. It is likely that the castle was damaged in the fighting that lead up to the fall of the Black Douglases, as king James II systematically took the Black Douglas castles.
It is disappointing that there is no information board. While visitors can get some background by searching on Wikipedia, it would be useful to have an information board on site with an artist’s impression of the castle in its heyday.
After the Douglases were disinherited the castle firstly went to the Hamiltons, former Douglas supporters who changed sides and helped king James to overthrow their old allies. Then In 1473 king James III granted Ettrick Forest and the castle to Margaret his queen, and therefore the royal coat of arms appears on the castles walls.
The royal coat of arms, added after the Douglases were disinherited.
It’s appropriate to post this weekend since the 13 September is the day in 1645 when the major battle of Philiphaugh took place only a mile or two from the castle. In the battle the royalist forces led by the Marquis of Montrose were destroyed by a larger Covenanter army. Montrose’s royalists troops had been terrorising Scotland, fighting for Charles I. The Covenanters opposed Charles’ attempt to impose bishops and a Church of England style of worship on the Scottish church.
The royalist were largely taken by surprise. Their officers where billeted in comfort in the town of Selkirk whilst the troops were camped a mile or two away in Philiphaugh. Because they were not initially with their troops Montrose and his officers were too late to organise a co-ordinated defence to the Covenanters’ surprise attack. In any case the Covenanters significantly outnumbered them – the Royalists had hope to recruit supporters in the Borders but few of the Borderers joined them. Philiphaugh was a decisive battle as it put an end of any major royalist force in Scotland.
A plaque on a house wall near the centre of Selkirk, commemorating the Marquis of Montrose’s who stayed around there in the night before the battle.
The castle was then a silent witness to a major war crime. About a hundred Irish troops fighting on the royalist side surrendered when they were offered quarter. They were then taken to Newark and murdered by the Covenanters, together with several hundred women and children who were camp followers of the royalist army. This was a time of religious fanaticism and intolerance. The Covenanters hated Montrose and his troops because of their religious differences, and because the royalists had committed a number of atrocities in the previous year when they ravaged the north of Scotland. The bodies of the dead were buried in an area known as Slain Mens Lea close to the castle.
There is a castle of the same name on the Clyde, and another one in England, not to be confused with Newark Castle near Selkirk.
Using the online “The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland” is free until 21 May. So if you want to know where the big brains in Oxford believe that your family name comes from, just google for the dictionary, and enter the name in the search box in the column on the left. The site also shows the distribution of the name in the UK’s 1881 census.
The castle from further up the Firth of Forth, with the Forth road and rail bridges in the background.
Blackness Castle is a rather grim, long and narrow castle. It stands at the tip of a small promontory on the south bank of the estuary of the River Forth. It protects the upper reaches of the Forth and the small port of Blackness, once the harbour for Linlithgow Palace, which is just over four miles inland. From some aspects the castle looks like a ship, and is sometimes referred to as the ship never sailed.
Blackness castle was built in the 1440s by Sir George Crichton, and was extended in subsequent centuries. At the time the Crichtons were a very powerful family, and close to King James II. When King James was a ten year old boy Crichton was the de facto ruler of Scotland. He organised the famous black dinner at Edinburgh Castle, when the 6th Earl of Douglas and his young brother were executed.
The Crichtons rose in royal esteem and patronage, but in due course their influence receded and the fickle King James II became increasingly demanding, and compelled the elderly and ailing George Crichton to assign his assets, including Blackness, to him. George’s son James naturally felt aggrieved and seized the castle, but after a two week siege and bombardment was compelled to surrender it to the king. Blackness became a royal castle, and was a major defensive site for the Forth Estuary.
The castle from the south, land side, showing the defensive on the west side.
The main entrance to the castle was originally on the east side, but in the 1530s King James V commissioned a major programme of work to improve the defences and the a defensive spur was built on the west side of the castle, which incorporated a new gate.
Blackness has “starred” in film and screen. It appeared as Fort William in Outlander, and is where the famous flogging scene of Jamie by Black Jack Randall took place.
It stood in for the Palace of Holyrood in the 2018 version of Mary Queen of Scots, starring Saoirse Ronan as Mary. A strange choice, as it looks nothing like Holyrood, but then there were many inaccuracies in what I felt was a rather mediocre film.
Inside the castle, photo taken from the north (stem) tower looking back along the castle.
I am pleased to announce the publication of may new book.
The great castles are a tangible link to the past, and have a story to tell. This book describes Historic Scotland’s five most visited lowland castles, Edinburgh, Stirling, Doune, St Andrews and Linlithgow. As well as providing an armchair tour of the castles the book describes their place in Scotland’s often turbulent and sometimes heroic history.
If you are considering visiting these great castles, or are just interested in Scotland’s history, this book has been written for you.
This is the third and final post relating to my one day visit to Orkney. There was just so much to see.
Next to St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall, Orkney, is the Earl’s Palace, now looked after by Historic Scotland. This is a large complex. The original building on the site was the Bishop’s Palace, some of which was built in the 12th century at the same time as the cathedral. The Bishop’s Palace seems to have fallen into disrepair for a time as the islands suffered famine and plague, but then been repaired and extended in the mid 16th century, when the islands were under Scottish control, and even received a visit from James V.
The Earl’s Palace – this is only a part of the Earl’s Palace complex. 1 in the following plan.
But the outstanding feature of the complex is the Earl’s Palace. This was added to the site in the first decade of the 17th century by Earl Patrick Stewart, or rather by forced labour working on the instructions of Stewart. Patrick Stewart’s father Robert was an illegitimate son of James V, and so was a half-brother of Mary Queen of Scots. The Stewarts were hated by the populace. They taxed the ordinary people excessively and used them as forced labour to build their palace and castles on the islands. But they overreached themselves, and in 1615 Patrick Stewart was arrested. His son tried to ferment a revolt against the crown. In the end the revolt was put down and father and son were executed in Edinburgh.
The full complexAnother view of the palace, 1 in the above schematic by Historic Scotland.
But the palace they built in Kirkwall was one of the best pieces of renaissance architecture in Scotland. With its corner turrets and oriel windows, it is a world away from the austere, defensive tower house that was the usual building design for noble’s houses only a few decades before. But it was built by heavily taxing the population and using their forced labour. Today it is ruined, but the magnificence of the building in its heyday is still obvious. The Earl’s Palace was a statement of comfort, beauty and status, built for the corrupt Stewart earls.
The Stewart Earls were absolute rogues. Eventually the Douglas Earl of Morton took over the complex
The Orkneys and Shetland, and the Earl’s Palace have a connection with the Douglas clan (my clan). In 1643 William Douglas, the 7th Earl of Morton, was granted the “regalities” (that is the rights and privileges due to the king) in Orkney and Zetland, as Shetland was known, by King Charles I. Morton was one of the King’s strongest supporters. He had sold his Dalkeith estate so he could advance £100,000, a massive sum at the time, to the king at the outbreak of the War of the Three Kingdoms (also known as the English Civil War). When Charles lost the war Morton retired to Kirkwall and died there in 1648 of natural causes. His son died the next year, and the 9th Earl inherited.
In 1652 Orkney was garrisoned by Oliver Cromwell’s parliamentarian troops. They used the adjoining St Magnus Cathedral as a stables and the palace as a barracks.
But the palace fell into disuse. By 1705 it was a roofless ruin. But the magnificence of the building in its heyday is still obvious.
How Could we Have Made Better Use of Our Time on Orkney?
This is my third post describing what we saw in our one day on Orkney. Based on our experience the best way for a history nerd to make the best use of a day on Orkney would have been to hire a car. This is what we did on an earlier visit in 2015. Particularly if there are two or more in your party it will be cheaper than tours organised by your cruise liner, as well as giving you the freedom to take in a range of sites. Basically you could follow a circular route west of Kirkwall, taking in Maeshowe, Skara Brae, the Gurness Broch complex, the Ring of Brodgar, the Stones of Stenness. That would be a full day as is. If time had allowed on returning to Kirkwall you could visit St Magnus Cathedral, the Earl’s Palace and the excellent museum opposite the cathedral.
However, rather than taking the above advice, arrange to stay in the Orkneys for a week! There is just so much history to see on the main island and other islands in the group. Even a week isn’t enough – make it a fortnight.
theheritagephotographer 