Scotland · Restored
Mains Castle
Mains Castle (also Claverhouse or Fintry Castle) is a 16th-century Scottish castle in Caird Park, Dundee, formerly the seat of the Grahams of Fintry. The complex comprises a large square tower house and ranges of buildings around a central courtyard, sited above the Dichty valley beside the Gelly Burn. It is a Category A listed building and was renovated in the late 20th century.
Its prime
1582
Today
Restored
As it stood in 1582
What Mains Castle looked like in its prime.
A compact courtyard castle of reddish-brown sandstone featuring a tall, six-storey square tower house with dressed cornerstones and a steep gabled roof with end chimneys. Lower two-storey ranges with steep slate roofs and small vertical windows enclose a yard; the southern range is simpler and lower, the northern and eastern ranges more domestic with dormer windows. A stone curtain wall with an arched western gateway fronts the approach. The site sits in parkland above a small burn and valley.
Its story
The story of Mains Castle.
Mains Castle, also known as Claverhouse or Fintry Castle, stands in Dundee's Caird Park, overlooking the Dichty valley beside the Gelly Burn. An earlier castle here was held by the Douglas Earls of Angus from the 14th century until 1530, when it passed to the Grahams. The 16th-century castle ranges several buildings around a courtyard, dominated by a six-floor square tower house with dressed cornerstones.
The seat of the Grahams of Fintry until the 19th century, it was sold by Robert Graham to David Erskine, on condition that his family retained the territorial title of Graham of Fintry and that the estate reverted to its older name of Lumlathen or Linlathen. Shipley Gordon Stuart Erskine later sold the estate to James Key Caird, who gifted castle and lands to the town council in 1913 as the site of a public park.
Across the burn lie the mausoleum of the Graham family and the Mains cemetery, formerly the site of the district's kirk. The Category A listed castle was renovated in the late 20th century, and it even earned a poem, The Castle of Mains, from the Dundee poet William McGonagall.
Step inside
8 places to explore in 1582.
The record describes 8 distinct spots at Mains Castle, including the full exterior approach. 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 Mains Castle with AI to explore it.
The artist rebuilds it as it stood in 1582, a photoreal reconstruction that belongs to you alone. Pay with coins, no subscription needed.
Recreate this castle →Castle Siege
Play Castle Siege at Mains Castle.
A strategy game played on Mains Castle’s real ground plan: the same surveyed walls shown in the archive below. Post your finite garrison on the battlements between assaults, then hold out as rams, siege towers, trebuchets and sappers arrive in ever-worse waves.
Sign in free to see the garrison muster. One castle costs 150 Clan Coins and is yours forever.
Sign in to take command →Whose castle
Clans who held Mains Castle.
The families that held Mains Castle for a decade or more across its history, follow a name to its clan.
From the archive
Mains 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. 167. — Mains Castle. Plans and Section.
1889 · MacGibbon & Ross, vol. 3 (1889)
Public domain
Fig. 168. — Mains Castle, from South-West.
1889 · MacGibbon & Ross, vol. 3 (1889)
Public domain
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