Old Slains Castle

The castle near Collieston was built in the 13th century as a fortress of the Comyns, Earls of Buchan. After the forfeiture of the Comyns in the 14th century Robert the Bruce granted it to Sir Gilbert Hay, in recognition of Hay's support against the English. Known also as Slains Castle, it is distinguished as Old Slains from New Slains Castle, a separate building five miles up the coast to the north-east.

The surviving tower house is largely 15th-century work: a strongly built oblong keep of five storeys, of which only a small part remains. A wall defending the landward side was added in the early 16th century.

Slains next comes into prominence with Francis Hay, 9th Earl of Erroll, who took part in a Catholic rebellion in the north of Scotland. James VI came to Aberdeen in April 1589 and placed a garrison of soldiers at the castle. In January 1593 the Earl was said to have welcomed so many English and Scottish Catholics in a tower at Slains that he was put to great expense. The rebellion culminated in the Battle of Glenlivet in 1594, which left the Catholic army substantially weakened, and the rising collapsed.

James VI marched north with an army intent on taking the leaders of the rebellion, Francis Hay among them, but they evaded capture. The king then set about blowing up their castles, Old Slains included. At his request Aberdeen Council supplied 20 stone (130 kg) of gunpowder together with pickaxes and other tools for the “demolishing and casting down of houses and fortalices to the sum of 548 pounds six shillings”, and sent the stonemason John Fraser and other workmen, equipped with new shovels, to the demolition work at Huntly Castle and at Slains. The castle was destroyed with gunpowder and cannon on 1 November. Two walls meeting at a corner survived the explosion.

The following year Elizabeth Douglas, Countess of Erroll, a friend of Anne of Denmark, hired masons to repair the building, but it was beyond saving. She moved instead into the farmhouse of Clochtow, half a mile north-west of the ruin, and remained in that “mean abode”, still there some time after 1597, when the honours and estates were restored. To the end of her days she preferred the plain designation “Guidwife of Clochtow” to her title, because the crown had never taken that name from her: it was what she had been called through her husband's exile, when he was a wanderer abroad and only plain Francis Hay. Hay later built a tower house called Bowness, on what is now the site of New Slains Castle.

In the 1950s a three-storey house was built within the ruins, adjoining a fishing cottage of the 18th century. The remains have been designated a scheduled monument since 1972. On 31 May 1979 the south-facing wall partially collapsed, bringing an estimated 100 tons of rubble down on the road beside the castle, blocking it and partly burying a lorry. Archaeological excavations have been carried out since 1991, the last of them in 2007.