Castle Huntly

Castle Huntly is a castle in the Carse of Gowrie , about 11 km west of Dundee in the Scottish administrative division of Perth and Kinross . The castle, now used as a prison, sits close to the banks of the Firth of Tay and is visible from the Dundee- Perth road . It is located on a rocky hill and is surrounded by farmland. In earlier times this land was a swampy wilderness and this secluded, easily defensible location was probably the reason to build the castle there.

history

Castle Huntly was built around 1452 for Baron Gray of Fowlis with the permission of King Jacob II . In 1614, the then Earl of Strathmore bought the castle and renamed it Castle Lyon . In the 1770s, the widow of the 7th Earl of Strathmore sold them to George Paterson of the East India Company . The new owner renamed the castle Castle Huntly again . The castle remained in family hands until 1946, when Colonel Adrian Gordon Paterson died; then she sold the widow to the state. In 1947 Castle Huntly was expanded as a correctional facility, then it became a facility for young convicts and finally a prison for adult men. Today the facility is called Her Majesty's Prison Castle Huntly and is the only open prison in Scotland. Most of the prisoners at the facility are classified as minor and serve sentences of up to two years. But there are also inmates there who have been sentenced to longer prison terms, but only have to serve a short remaining sentence.

The White Woman and Other Stories

It is said that the castle is haunted by a white woman, a young woman in a flowing white dress. There are many stories of their fate; one of them says that she was a daughter of the '' Lyon '' family who lived in the castle in the 17th century. Allegedly she started an affair with a servant and, when her love affair was discovered, was banished to a bedroom high up in the tower above the battlements. She couldn't bear her suffering and jumped from the tower to her death (or was she pushed?). The ghost of the White Woman and seen several times over the years, often at night on the castle grounds. She was also seen in the bedroom where she was locked. The families who claimed to have seen her said that she did not want to scare anyone and that she looked harmless.

A second ghost that is said to haunt the castle is that of a young lad with a double-breasted sailing jacket. He is said to have been seen in the room from which the White Woman is said to have thrown herself to her death, and it is speculated that he is said to be the son of Colonel Adrian Gordon Paterson . The Colonel's only son, Richard , drowned in a boat accident on the Tay in 1939 . Interestingly, it is supposed to appear in the room occupied by the White Woman, and it is believed that her mind could somehow have "tempered" the room so that other ghosts can appear there more easily.

source

• Grant Campbell: Scottish Hauntings . Piccolo.

Coordinates: 56 ° 26 ′ 56 ″  N , 3 ° 8 ′ 2 ″  W.