Fa'side Castle

The earliest records of the land show it held in the 1190s by Saer de Quincy, 1st Earl of Winchester, who had inherited his titles and estates through marriage to Margaret, sister of Robert de Beaumont, 2nd Earl of Leicester. On his death the earldom passed to his son Roger de Quincy, 2nd Earl of Winchester, and on Roger's death in 1264 the property passed to one of his sons-in-law, Alan la Zouche, 1st Baron la Zouche of Ashby. La Zouche was killed in battle in 1270, and his widow Helene de Quincy remained in residence until her own death.

In 1288 the manor was besieged by Sir William Douglas while Helene's niece, Eleanor de Ferrers, widow of William de Ferrers, was visiting; Douglas kidnapped Eleanor during the siege and later married her. The de Quincys' declared loyalty to Edward I of England cost the family the land, which Robert the Bruce granted to the Setons. The Fawsydes of that Ilk acquired it from the Setons in 1371, around when the building and hill were renamed "Falside" or "Fawside".

The Fawsydes built the earliest part of the present castle, a four-storey keep, in the 15th century; a turreted block was added later to form the L-plan. English forces burned the castle before the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh, fought on Falside Hill on 10 September 1547, suffocating or burning everyone inside.

Mary, Queen of Scots left Fa'side on the morning of 15 June 1567 for the Battle of Carberry Hill, changing into a short skirt and leaving her fine clothes behind in a chest at the castle. The castle was rebuilt and extended to the south in the late 16th century, and a surviving oak bed, now at Biggar Museum, was made for Margaret Fawside, who married Patrick Levingstone of Saltcoats near Gullane.

On 5 November 1620 a number of local and neighbouring landowners dined with Janet Lawson, Lady Fawside, at the castle and illegally combined to fix and raise the price of coal from their mines. The Privy Council of Scotland found their agreement unlawful and ordered the lairds fined £2,000 and imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle; in their defence they argued that their coal was unprofitable, that the Master of Elphinstone's workings at Little Fawside were on fire, and that the Fawside mine had bankrupted the old laird. In 1631 the Fawsydes sold the castle to an Edinburgh burgess and merchant named Hamilton.

By the 1700s the castle had fallen into ruin and no longer appeared on the East Lothian tax rolls. In the 1970s the owner of the adjoining farmland sought to have the ruin condemned and demolished as a public-safety risk, but local opposition twice stopped the plan. The historian Nigel Tranter helped save the castle by founding the Fa'side Restoration Society in 1970 through the St Andrews Society of East Lothian.

The castle was listed as a category B building on 5 February 1971, ahead of its eventual rebuilding: Thomas Moodie Craig bought and restored it, with the architects Ian Parsons overseeing works completed in 1982. Standing on a high ridge southwest of Tranent with views over East Lothian and the Firth of Forth, it remains in private ownership.