Scotland · Restored
Lauriston Castle
Lauriston Castle is a privately owned country house and former fortress on a clifftop near St Cyrus in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. The site preserves elements from a medieval courtyard castle and a corner tower together with a large Georgian Palladian mansion and estate landscaping.
Its prime
1789
Today
Restored
As it stood in 1789
What Lauriston Castle looked like in its prime.
At its prime the site combined a low-walled medieval courtyard with a single round corner tower set on the cliff edge, alongside a large three-storey Georgian Palladian mansion (1765–89) with a symmetrical centre block and hipped rooflines. A freestanding cylindrical doocot tower stood near the house and a two-acre walled garden lay within the policies. The whole ensemble sat on a grassy clifftop about a mile inland from the North Sea, with designed walks and cascades in the surrounding parkland.
Its story
The story of Lauriston Castle.
Lauriston Castle stands on a clifftop near the Aberdeenshire village of St Cyrus, just over a mile from the North Sea. Once a royal fortress, it can claim to be one of the oldest privately owned and inhabited castles in the region; by tradition the site was the stronghold of Giric, Gregory the Great, one of the last of the Pictish kings (878–889).
For nearly 450 years Lauriston was held by the Stratons, whose arms of 1292 are among the earliest recorded in Scotland. An Alexander Straton is the final signatory of the Declaration of Arbroath, the famous letter of 1320 from the nation's earls and barons to Pope John XXII.
Local history preserves a grim tale of the Mearns barons: exasperated by the high-handed Sheriff John Melville of Glenbervie, and taking the Regent Albany's outburst, that he would not mind if they "biled the loon and suppit the bree", as royal licence, they lured Melville to a hunting party, tipped him into a cauldron of boiling water and supped the broth. Today a Georgian Palladian mansion adjoins the surviving elements of the medieval courtyard castle and its corner tower.
Step inside
8 places to explore in 1789.
The record describes 8 distinct spots at Lauriston Castle, including 1 interior: great hall (interior). Create your own photoreal reconstruction and explore every one, more scenes means more rooms, more angles, and more of the place to stand in.
Build Your Own Castle
Recreate Lauriston Castle with AI to explore it.
The artist rebuilds it as it stood in 1789, a photoreal reconstruction that belongs to you alone. Pay with coins, no subscription needed.
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Clans who held Lauriston Castle.
The families that held Lauriston Castle for a decade or more across its history, follow a name to its clan.
Straton
Held by the Stratons for nearly 450 years; their arms of 1292 are among the earliest recorded in Scotland.
From the archive
Lauriston Castle on paper: the measured plan and period views.
The survey plan and photographs below are the ground truth this page's reconstructions are checked against, drawn and photographed while the castle was still a working garrison. Every image is public-domain or openly licensed, with its source named.
Fig. 680. — Lauriston Castle, from North-West. (After Nattes.)
1892 · MacGibbon & Ross, vol. 4 (1892)
Public domain
Fig. 681.—Lauriston Castle, from South-West. (After Nattes.)
1892 · MacGibbon & Ross, vol. 4 (1892)
Public domain
Fig. 682.—Lauriston Castle. Dormer Window in South Front
1892 · MacGibbon & Ross, vol. 4 (1892)
Public domain
