Fast Castle
| Fast Castle | ||
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 Fast Castle from the land side |
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| Creation time : | 14th Century | |
| Castle type : | Höhenburg , spur location | |
| Conservation status: | ruin | |
| Standing position : | Scottish nobility | |
| Construction: | Quarry stone | |
| Place: | Dowlaw | |
| Geographical location | 55 ° 55 '56.6 " N , 2 ° 13' 26" W | |
| Height: | 45 m ASL | |
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Fast Castle is the ruin of a spur castle in the Scottish county of Berwickshire (now part of the Scottish Borders administrative division ). The ruin of the former coastal fortress is about 4 miles west of the village of Coldingham on the North Sea coast , just outside of St Abb's Head National Nature Reserve . Fast Castle is considered a Scheduled Monument .
Building description
Fast Castle, in its prime, had a courtyard and donjon built on a narrow, sloping plateau 27 meters by 82 meters above the North Sea . Cliffs up to 45 meters high on all sides made the fortress relatively difficult to conquer. The plateau was surrounded by a curtain wall with towers; the donjon was at the northern end of the headland. The fortress could only be reached via a drawbridge over a narrow ravine protected by a barbican . Today only the foundations of the donjon and the castle courtyard walls and a section of the north-eastern wall are preserved. The construction of the fort was very similar to Dunnottar Castle in Aberdeenshire , but Fast Castle is smaller. The sea could be reached by a cable system with a basket. At the foot of the cliffs is a cave that the residents may have used as access to the interior.
history
It's not clear when the first building was constructed on this site, but its easily defensible location must have made it attractive to the area's first residents. There is evidence of the presence of Iron Age residents . In the island-Celtic kingdom of Bryneich and its Anglo-Saxon successor state of Bernicia , the site played a central role.
Fast Castle is first mentioned in a document in 1333. In 1346 the area was occupied by an English garrison and served as a base for the sacking of the surrounding country. In 1410 a force led by Patrick Dunbar , the second son of the 10th Earl of Dunbar and March , captured the fortress and imprisoned its governor, Thomas Holden . Their new, Scottish governor, William Haliburton , was also able to take Wark-on-Tweed Castle in Northumberland in 1419 .
The fortress fell into the hands of the Home family . In 1503 they hosted Margaret Tudor , daughter of Henry VII on the way to her wedding with King James IV of Scotland . After the defeat of the Scots and the death of King James IV in the Battle of Flodden Field in 1513, in which numerous Homes were killed, a dispute over power broke out between Regent Albany and various other nobles, including Alexander Home, 3rd Lord Home , Chamberlain of Scotland . Fast Castle was destroyed in this chaos in 1515, Alexander Home was executed in 1516 and his lands were forfeited.
The fortress was rebuilt in 1522 when the lands of the Homes were returned to Alexander's brother, George Home, 4th Lord Home . During Rough Wooing , the fortress was retaken by the English in 1547, but was again in Scottish hands when Mary Queen of Scots stayed in 1566. Madge Gordon , a widow from Coldingham, is said to have instigated the Scots to recapture Fast Castle from English hands. When the castle was again in possession of the homes, the English ambassador Nicholas Throckmorton stayed at the fortress on July 11, 1567 as a guest of Alexander Home, 5th Lord Home , where he “looked for the possibilities of the place, which was more than accommodation for Prisoners, because as such suitable for free people, were treated very well; he is very small and very strong. "
The fortress fell to Sir Robert Logan of Restalrig through his mother, a widow of Lord Home. In 1570 it was briefly taken again by the English. Fast Castle was well armed: some of the cannons were moved to Berwick-upon-Tweed during the English intervention against supporters of Mary Queen of Scots in the 1570s . These cannons were two brass merlins and four falcons.
Sir Robert Logan was a notorious, dissolute do -it- all who got involved in the Gowrie conspiracy to kidnap the young Prince James VI. was involved. In 1594 Logan commissioned the well-known mathematician (and suspected of being a warlock) John Napier to search for treasure at Fast Castle. He should "(...) do his best, diligently and with all skill and genius, search for it [the treasure] and find it with God's help, or make sure that there was no such thing." For this he should take a third of those found Treasures received. But there are no records of any treasures that he found. Logan died in 1606, his lands were forfeited in 1609, his body was exhumed and brought to justice.
The fortress was already in ruins at that time. It fell briefly to the Douglas family , back to the Earls of Dunbar, then the Arnot family , then back to the Homes, and finally to the Hall family .
Fast Castle can be reached via the neighboring farm in Dowlaw ; a steep path leads there. A concrete bridge replaced the earlier drawbridge. From 1971 to 1986 the Edinburgh Archaeological Field Society carried out excavations at Fast Castle.
Fast Castle was originally called "Fause Castle" because lights were hung there at night to mislead ships. Captains saw the lights in the dark and assumed they had reached a safe haven but were escorted onto the rocks where wreckers waited to plunder the wreckage.
In the literature
The fortress is said to have inspired Sir Walter Scott to depict Wolf's Crag in his 1819 novel The Bride of Lammermoor . Both Fast Castle and Logan of Restalrig appear in Nigel Tranter's trilogy of historical novels, The Master of Gray . The fortress is also featured frequently in Tranter's Mail Royal , a sequel to the earlier trilogy.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Scheduled Monument - Entry . In: Historic Scotland .
- ↑ a b c d Fast Castle . In: Canmore . Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland. Retrieved July 13, 2017.
- ↑ a b c d Fast Castle . In: Gazetteer for Scotland . Retrieved July 13, 2017.
- ^ John Mackay Wilson: Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland: Historical, Traditionary, & Imaginative . Pp. 1-21. 1885. Retrieved July 13, 2017.
- ↑ Joseph Stevenson: (Editor): Selections from unpublished manuscripts in the College of Arms and the British Museum illustrating the reign of Mary Queen of Scotland . 1837, p. 197. Retrieved July 13, 2017.
- ^ Calendar State Papers Scotland . Volume 5. 1907, p. 156.
- ^ William Chambers, Robert Chambers: Chambers Edinburgh Journal . August 9, 1834. Retrieved July 13, 2017.
- ↑ About us . Edinburgh Archaeological Field Society. Archived from the original on June 24, 2009. Retrieved July 13, 2017.
- ↑ Fast Castle Berwickshire by John Horsburgh after the Rev. J. Thomson . In: The Walter Scott Digital Archive . Edinburgh University Library. Retrieved July 13, 2017.
