Ravenscraig Castle

Ravenscraig was ordered by James II, whose reign ran from 1437 to 1460, as a home for his wife Mary of Guelders, and put in the hands of the mason Henry Merlioun and the master carpenter Friar Andres Lesouris. It is reckoned one of the first castles in Scotland — perhaps the very first — built to withstand cannon fire and to provide for artillery defence. The king was an artillery enthusiast and involved himself in the planning; he was killed when one of his own guns exploded at the siege of Roxburgh Castle in the Borders.

Work began in about 1460 under his widow, who raised it as a memorial to him and as her dower house. She carried the building on until her death in December 1463, by which point the east tower and the basement of the central block had probably been put up for her by Merlioun, with David Boys serving as master of works. Andrew Balfour, a servant of the royal wardrobe, organised the supply of timber joists in 1461; the timber came down the Allan Water and was shipped to Fife from Stirling. Enough was finished for her steward Henry Kinghorn and other members of her household to live on the site during the works.

Ownership passed to Mary's son James III. In 1471 he handed Ravenscraig to William Sinclair, Earl of Orkney and Caithness, in exchange for the Earldom of Orkney and its associated lands, which James annexed from Norway to the Scottish Crown. The Sinclairs, who had an interest in artillery fortification of their own, completed the castle.

The site is a narrow rocky promontory in the Firth of Forth, defended on three sides by steep cliffs dropping to the sea. The landward face is the fighting front: two D-plan towers with outer walls 4.25 metres thick, joined by battlements that carried an artillery platform, its gun holes pointing landward, and the whole defended by a deep rock-cut ditch crossed by a bridge. Those gun holes are of the inverted-keyhole type that became common in the late 15th century, and the vaulted cellars and guard room of the linking block carry the platform above them.

James V and Mary of Guise came to Ravenscraig on 9 April 1540 on their way to Falkland Palace, arriving in two galleys rowed over from Kinghorn. The Duke of Holstein visited with William Schaw in 1598. During the invasion of Scotland by English forces under Oliver Cromwell in 1650–51, the castle was attacked and damaged.

The Sinclairs kept the castle and built Dysart House on the estate in 1755–56; the property later passed to the St Clair-Erskines, Earls of Rosslyn, and stayed in the family until the 5th Earl sold it in 1896 to the linoleum magnate Sir Michael Nairn, who lived at Dysart House. Ravenscraig was used as an ammunition depot during the First World War. In 1929 the Nairn family gave 85 acres of the estate, the castle included, to the town of Kirkcaldy as a public park. It passed into state care in 1955, has been open to the public since 1971, and is now managed by Historic Environment Scotland; it has been a scheduled monument since 1935.

Ravenscraig is the setting Sir Walter Scott chose for the ballad Rosabelle, sung by the bard Harold at the wedding feast in the sixth canto of The Lay of the Last Minstrel. Under Scott's name for the place, Ravensheuch, Rosabelle — apparently a daughter of the St Clair family — sets out by boat across the Forth despite dire warnings, bound for a ball at the family seat of Roslin Castle in Midlothian; that night an eerie light blazes on the castle and the nearby chapel where her ancestors lie buried, and Rosabelle herself lies drowned.