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Recording Your Heritage Online
Event ID 566456
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Recording Your Heritage Online
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/566456
Niddry Castle, from 15th century
If ever there was a medieval high-rise, it was this. The grim shale-oil black stump etched against a shale bing (the customary view from the train) is entirely misleading, for Niddry has been a place of magnificence, seat of the princely Setons of East Lothian, grand enough to welcome a queen (Mary Queen of Scots stayed here after escaping from Loch Leven). The large L-plan tower-house on its rocky outcrop above the Niddry Burn had a cobbled inner court, round tower at each corner (foundations survive), possibly including a gallery. By the early 17th century, two more storeys had sprouted through the roof in polished ashlar. After centuries of ruin, birdlime and houlets, it has been re-roofed at the 15th-century level, and reoccupied under a scheme by William A Cadell. The scale of the turnpike stair and of the huge hall (with its chapel), kitchen and adjoining wing, takes you aback. From the hall floor (now a museum), there were two storeys below, and probably four above. Niddry was an enormous, vertically planned mansion of which all we can enjoy today is the plinth. The whole ensemble awaits reinstatement of the upper balustrade, harling and, if permitted, the enclosing walls at ground level (colour page). Large walled garden to the south-east once the principality of John Reid, the first gardening author in Scottish history, who wrote The Scots Gard'ner in 1683.
Taken from "West Lothian: An Illustrated Architectural Guide", by Stuart Eydmann, Richard Jaques and Charles McKean, 2008. Published by the Rutland Press http://www.rias.org.uk
