Field Visit
Date 20 August 1908
Event ID 1088382
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1088382
77. Fast Castle.
Fast Castle is situated at an elevation of about 158 feet, on a promontory of rock projecting into the sea some 1000 yards north-north-east of Dowlaw farm. The platform on which the castle stood is 260 feet long by 88 feet broad. The neck of the promontory has been traversed by a deep trench or chasm 20 feet wide,on the castle side of which are still observable the remains of a round tower. Within, part of the east wall of the keep still remains as high as the corbelling, with two corbels in situ, but all the rest of the structure is completely destroyed. The scanty remains of the battlement which encircled the promontory still exist below the edge of the precipitous cliffs on the west side.
Fast Castle was only a minor fortress, at first of the Earls of Dunbar, afterwards giving name to a branch of the Homes. In the early years of the 15th century it was for a time alternately in English and Scottish hands. It was garrisoned in January 1514, as a result of the English victory at Flodden; thereafter was implicated in the opposition to the regency of the Duke of Albany and was by him captured and razed (1515). Some six years later it was rebuilt. The English ambassador, who lodged in it for a night in 1567, declared that it was ‘fitter to lodge prisoners in than folks at liberty; as it is very little, so is it very strong’. An opinion of Cromwell's time (1651) describes it as being, in comparison with Tantallon, ‘as strong, though of little importance, being not able to shelter horses’ (1). The strength of the place consisted in its isolated and precipitous site. By marriage of an heiress it had passed in the reign of James V. from the Homes to Logan of Restalrig, returning, however, to Lord Home by disposition in 1606.
See Cast. and Dom. Arch., iii. p. 222 (plan and illus.); Carr’s
Coldingham, p. 92; Scott's Provincial Antiquities, ii. p. 188 (illus.); (1) Douglas's Cromwell's Scotch Campaigns, p. 234, n.; Wedderburn Paper's (Hist. MSS. Comn.).
RCAHMS 1915, visited 24th August 1908
OS Map: BER., ii. SW.
