Red Castle, Angus

The earliest structure on the site, on high ground above Lunan Bay some 4 miles (6.4 km) south-south-west of Montrose, was built for King William the Lion in the late twelfth century to repel Viking invasions of the bay. William himself, though, took up residence there on several occasions while on hunting expeditions.

In 1194 William conferred the castle, together with the land around the village of Inverkeilor 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) to the east, on Walter de Berkeley, the Great Chamberlain.

On Berkeley's death, Inverkeilor and the castle passed to Ingram de Balliol, who had married Walter's heiress. He rebuilt the castle, and it stayed with that family for two generations: when his grandson Ingram, who flourished between 1280 and 1284, died childless in about 1305, the property passed to Henry de Fishburn, son of Constance de Baliol.

Deeds of 1286 call the place rubeum castrum — Latin for Red Castle — after the burnished red sandstone typical of this stretch of coast. The property was forfeit during Robert the Bruce's reallocation of lands, and in 1328 the Bruce gave the castle to the Earl of Ross.

In 1579 James, son of Patrick Gray, 4th Lord Gray, married Lady Elizabeth Beaton, who owned the castle, and fell in love with her daughter. After Lady Beaton threw him out, Gray — with his brother Andrew of Dunninald and John Ogilvy of Kynnody — laid siege to the castle for two years, ultimately burning the inhabitants out.

James VI ordered John Erskine of Dun and his son Robert to bring siege engines and eject Gray, with the help of the townspeople of Dundee. On 28 February a royal messenger was sent from Stirling Castle to proclaim at the mercat crosses of Dundee, Forfar, Montrose and Arbroath that all the lieges between sixty and sixteen years old should pass forward in warlike manner to the relief of the siege of the "hous of the Reidcastell", and that James Gray and John Ogilvie of Kynnody should leave that siege under the pain of treason. Erskine was asked to inventory the goods in the castle and to give safe conduct to Elizabeth Beaton's son, the poet John Stewart of Baldynneis, to the king's presence. In March 1582 Andrew Gray was forgiven for setting fire to the castle and its yards, and for other crimes.

In 1590 it was reported that 12,000 gold crowns had been landed in the creek near the castle to aid the Catholic cause in Scotland. The castle then slipped into decline, and although it remained partially roofed until 1770 it was never again a residence of nobility; its last inhabitant was the minister of Inverkeilor, one James Rait.

Only part of the fifteenth-century rectangular tower survives, along with the 2-metre (6.6 ft) thick east curtain wall; the surrounding wall, or enceinte, may date from the thirteenth century. A midden below the castle erodes continually, yielding artefacts now held in the Montrose Museum. The tower, perched on the edge of the hill above the bay, was described in 1999 as being "in imminent danger of collapse"; the site has been protected as a scheduled monument since 2 October 1970.