Craigmillar Castle

Three miles southeast of Edinburgh's city centre, far from the tourist crowds that throng Edinburgh Castle and the Royal Mile, stands one of Scotland's best-preserved medieval castles. Craigmillar Castle is Edinburgh's great overlooked treasure — a massive, brooding fortress of warm red sandstone that played host to some of the most dramatic events in Scottish history yet remains blissfully free of the commercial bustle that characterises many of the nation's historic properties. For visitors who want to experience a genuine medieval castle in relative solitude, Craigmillar is a revelation.

The castle's origins date to the early fifteenth century, when Sir Simon Preston of Gorton constructed the original L-plan tower house around 1400. This central tower — five storeys of solid stone with walls over two metres thick — survives largely intact and forms the imposing heart of the castle complex. Over the following two centuries, successive generations of the Preston family expanded the castle with an inner courtyard wall (added around 1427), an outer curtain wall with round corner towers (mid-fifteenth century), and a range of domestic buildings including a chapel, a kitchen, and a great hall.

The result is a castle that illustrates the evolution of Scottish medieval architecture more completely than almost any other site in the country. The visitor can trace the development from simple tower house to fortified courtyard castle to the more comfortable Renaissance residence that the Prestons created in the sixteenth century, when wide windows were inserted into walls that had previously been pierced only by narrow arrow slits. The fish pond in the courtyard garden, a rare surviving medieval luxury, hints at the sophisticated domestic life that the castle's later owners enjoyed.

Craigmillar's most significant historical association is with Mary, Queen of Scots. The queen visited the castle on several occasions, most notably in November 1566, when she retreated to Craigmillar to recover from illness following the birth of her son, the future James VI. It was during this visit that the so-called 'Craigmillar Conference' took place — a secret meeting between Mary's nobles at which, according to later testimony, the plot to murder her estranged husband Lord Darnley was discussed. Darnley was killed at Kirk o' Field in Edinburgh three months later, in February 1567, in an explosion that rocked the city. Whether Mary was complicit in the murder remains one of the great unsolved questions of Scottish history.

The castle's physical presence is tremendously imposing. Approaching from the south, along the tree-lined avenue from Craigmillar Castle Road, the fortress rises from its hilltop setting with a brooding authority that Edinburgh Castle, surrounded as it is by urban development, can no longer fully command. The outer curtain wall, with its round corner towers and defensive gatehouse, encloses an area of over an acre. The inner courtyard, protected by a second ring of walls, creates a sequence of defensive layers that would have made the castle extremely difficult to assault.

Climbing to the top of the tower house provides panoramic views that explain the castle's strategic value. The entire eastern approach to Edinburgh is visible from the battlements, along with the Firth of Forth, the coast of Fife, and the distant profile of Arthur's Seat. On a clear day, the panorama extends from the Bass Rock in the east to the Pentland Hills in the southwest. The rooftop viewing platform, reached by a tight spiral staircase, offers the same commanding perspective that medieval sentries would have enjoyed — though they would presumably have been less inclined to take photographs.

Craigmillar Castle's relative obscurity is both its challenge and its greatest charm. Because it lacks Edinburgh Castle's central location and name recognition, visitor numbers remain modest, and the experience of exploring the castle feels genuinely personal. You can wander through the great hall, peer into the dungeon, climb the spiral staircases, and stand on the battlements with nothing but birdsong and wind for company. It is the closest thing Edinburgh offers to a private castle experience, and for anyone with even a passing interest in medieval history, it is unmissable.