Dunbar Castle

The rock above Dunbar harbour was defended long before any stone castle stood on it: the site's Brythonic name, dyn barr, means 'the fort of the point', and the Gododdin are thought to have been its first defenders. By the 7th century it was a central defensive position of the Anglian kings of Bernicia — Saint Wilfrid was imprisoned here in 678 after his expulsion from the see of York — and it later came into the possession of Kenneth MacAlpin, King of the Scots, who is said to have burnt it.

The first stone castle is thought to have been built by Gospatric, Earl of Northumbria. Exiled from England after William the Conqueror's Harrowing of the North, Gospatric took refuge at the court of Malcolm III, who bestowed on him the manor of Dunbar with lands in East Lothian, the Merse and Lauderdale — recompense for what he had lost in the south, in return for his loyalty and the many men he could summon.

In June 1338 the castle withstood a siege by William Montagu, 1st Earl of Salisbury. Sir Alexander Ramsay of Dalhousie relieved the garrison and assisted the Countess of Dunbar — 'Black Agnes' — in the successful defence; it seems probable Ramsay and his followers slipped in with provisions through a dark postern giving access to a rocky inlet from the sea. A gateway in the ruins still carries the arms of her nephew George, 10th Earl of Dunbar, who succeeded in 1369 and inherited Annandale and the Isle of Man from her: a lion rampant within a bordure charged with eight roses, flanked by the arms of the Bruces and of Man.

The castle remained the stronghold of the Earls of Dunbar until the forfeiture of George, Earl of March, in 1457, when it was dismantled to prevent its occupation by the English.

James IV restored the castle later in the century, with Andrew Wood of Largo as keeper. The accounts of 1497 are unusually vivid: timber bought for the Hannis tower, the master mason Walter Merlioun completing the gatehouse, a wooden portcullis and a metal yett made by Thomas Barker with hinges forged at Edinburgh Castle, and John the Quarrier digging a new well. The king visited in April 1497, rewarded the masons with drinksilver in May, and on 20 August met Sir William Tyler, governor of Berwick, at Dunbar to discuss a truce. Ferquhard Mackintosh, an heir to the Lordship of the Isles, was held prisoner in the castle for over ten years.

During the minority of James V the castle came under the control of the Duke of Albany, whose garrison of 100 French soldiers was paid by Francis I of France. In this period the artillery bulwark to the west was built, possibly designed by Antoine d'Arces, Sieur de la Bastie, who was placed in charge of the castle in December 1514; an English visitor, the Baron Dacre, was impressed by the new 'bulwerk'. James V came to the castle frequently in the summer of 1537 and oversaw the arrangement of his artillery.

The Earl of Shrewsbury burnt the castle on a punitive raid during the Rough Wooing in 1548, and further re-fortification followed under Piero Strozzi and Migliorino Ubaldini. The French soldier Jean de Beaugué judged it 'a very handsome and strong place built on a lofty rock on the edge of the sea', with few places anywhere 'less exposed to battery, and all other methods of storming'.

Mary of Guise came to Dunbar in June 1559 in fear of the Protestant Lords of the Congregation, and her Italian engineers enlarged the fortress until inspectors in July 1560 found it 'more ample by the double than it was of before' and capable of holding 500 more soldiers. The new work was immediately demolished under the Treaty of Edinburgh, and the French garrison of 60 under Corbeyran de Sarlabous held on until September 1561.

Mary, Queen of Scots stayed at Dunbar repeatedly through the 1560s. On 24 April 1567 the Earl of Bothwell brought her to the castle, and she came to Dunbar again before confronting her enemies at Carberry Hill on 15 June. That September the castle was besieged to eject Bothwell's supporters — the bakers and butchers of Haddington were summoned to supply the camp — and in December 1567 the Parliament of Scotland ordered Dunbar 'cast down utterly to the ground'. Demolition stalled in January 1568 when the master carpenter estimated the cost at £2,000 Scots — the same sum, it was said, would rebuild it into one of the strongest places in Scotland — but by September 1568 stone was being selected for reuse at the quayside of the Shore of Leith, and the castle has been a ruin ever since.