My wife and I took a visit to Craigmillar Castle, here in Edinburgh today. Edinburgh castle is quite famous, but Craigmillar Castle, which is on the outskirts is not so well known although it is quite historic.
The castle is over 600 years old and a ruin these days. However, it is maintained by Historic Scotland, and is safe to enter. Although a ruin, there are still many rooms internally that you can visit and see, although they just consist of bare walls.
It is a defensive castle (as they pretty much all were from that age) with fairly large walls all around a central keep, where the family, etc would have lived.
Although I didnt get a good picture of it, the main tower at the back of the castle which had the family rooms and dinning halls is pretty tall for its age - coming in at around something like 7 to 9 stories high.
The castle sits on a low hill on the outskirts of Edinburgh, and from that tower, which you can still get to the top of, you get some nice views. So defensively it was well sited, giving good views out all around. The view above looks back toward the city - with Arthur's Seat being the small hill/mountain you can see in the centre. You can also see Edinburgh castle in the pic above. If you look to the left of the hill you'll see it. Its the thing jutting up on the skyline in between the hill and the left hand edge of the pic above.
The pic above looks North East, also giving a great view over to the Firth of Forth, which is a sea inlet from which any invading ships would have come - and as such, you can see that it really did have great views all round which were pretty crucial from a defensive perspective, especially to give warning of any invaders.
As said above, the rooms are all pretty bare inside now, but some, like the one above, still have some impressive features. But in the pic above, you are actually seeing two floors worth of rooms. The vaulted ceiling was there to support the upper floors, and a further wooden floor would have been suspended on the stone supports you can see sticking out from the walls. This was the main dinning room, and as such the beams would have been painted in bright colours, and tapestries would have hung on the walls to create quite a nice atmosphere.
The castle played its part in History, particularly with Mary Queen of Scots having stayed there in 1566. Mary Queen of Scots is probably the most famous Scots Royal - and the info board above told the story surrounding her stay.
So did you ever wonder how people went to the toilet all those years ago in a castle ? Well the answer is above ! They had stone chutes that went out over the side of the castle walls - nice ! Looks like it was quite drafty - I wouldnt fancy using that in the dead of winter !
In the pic above, you can see the stone chute from the outside. All the waste would then stream down the outside of the castle wall and form in a pile at the bottom. Medieval hygiene at its best (or about as good as it got).
It was all the rage to have some fancy gardens back in those days, and they have cut the grass to show how it might have been back in the day, which you can see quite nicely from up on the walls. It was sort of a keeping up with the Jones' thing. To show your wealth you had to have all of the features of a fully fledged house of the nobility.
Craigmillar castle also had quite a large fish pond just outside the castle walls. You can see the remains of it in the pic above - its the green rectangle with the lumps and bumps that the people are walking around. That would have been quite the feature back in those days ! I bet the laird of the castle would often boast about that to his other castle mates.
Some of the features in the rooms are quite impressive like the lovely big fireplace above (it was about 10 foot wide).
One really cool feature at Craigmillar is those lovely trees which are just behind the main entrance into the castle courtyard. The pic above is not doing it justice, but it looks quite stunning when you walk in under their branches.
You can see the trunk of one of the trees behind the entrance in the pic above, adn the tops of it just poking out over the top of the wall.
I didnt notice this on previous visits, but look at all those black streaks coming down the castle walls. Those are from the drainage ports in the castle walls. I guess the water is trickling down and dragging some form of waste with it from above which is staining the stones in the all.
I have to say that this castle is well worth the visit, and I think this was our third time there. Although a ruin there is still lots to explore and its quite impressive to see. The stone work alone is quite amazing.
I quite liked the pic above. It looks like the guy at the back is perched precariously on the edge of the wall ! But he just happens to be standing on a central column of the defensive tower that sits at that corner of the castle but behind the building you can see ! I can confirm he was safe and that no tourists fell to their death from the walls during the making of this photo !
Well we certainly enjoyed our trip there - it was lovely to explore, even if it was a little wet.
And just remember, if you are ever in Edinburgh, you could consider going to see the 'other' castle !
[Thats a joke - there are actually quite a few other castles in and around Edinburgh - not just two, although this is the other main/large one]
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