Craigmillar Castle, Scotland

Craigmillar Castle stands on a rocky hilltop, just three miles south east of Edinburgh. I usually start out by giving you the date of the castle, that’s not quite so easy this time. I’ve been to Craigmillar twice and I have a guidebook from each visit, but the guidebooks do not agree on the castle's date. The current guidebook tells us that the castle was begun before 1400, and that the curtain wall dates from the 15th Century, where the previous guidebook puts it all a bit later, and says that the tower house dates from the 15th Century. The earlier date is most likely correct, as there was a Sir Simon Preston I, who set his seal on a charter there in 1425.

What we do know, is that the Preston family had acquired Craigmillar in 1374, and it probably wasn’t too long afterwards that they started building the keep, unless of course there was already a smaller home on the site that we don’t know about. It has been argued that there are similarities between the tower at Craigmillar, and David’s Tower in Edinburgh Castle, which was begun in the 1360’s, which may make the date for the tower house more likely to be the late 14 th century.

The Preston family held Craigmillar for the Crown, as a hereditary fief, in return for providing the King, whenever required, with an archer to serve in the Scottish army. Both my sources have this as ‘an archer’, rather than archers, which I would have thought more likely.

We do know that the tower house was already built by the mid to late 15th Century, was it was at this time that the castle was enlarged and a quadrangular enclosure wall was built, with circular projecting towers at its corners. 

The battlements project over the gate of the middle courtyard door, from which the defenders could drop missiles onto the heads of their attackers below. The parapets are also crenelated, and pierced with more shot holes to give protection to those firing guns or crossbows from the wall walk. The Preston arms can be seen carved in stone above the doorway, which was inserted in 1549, with the royal arms of Scotland on the parapet above.

It was Sir Simon Preston IV, who was Laird of the Castle, in May 1544, when the English invaded Scotland following the Scots repudiation of an agreement made earlier at Greenwich, in which an alliance was formed between Scotland and England, by marrying the two year old Mary Queen of Scots to her first cousin Prince Edward, who was the heir to her uncle, Henry VIII of England. Craigmillar was besieged and captured, a contemporary source tells us that: 

         ‘past to Craigmillar, quihilk was haistilie gevin to thame, promes and to keip the samyne without skaith (damage) quhilk promes thai break, and brunt and destroyit the said hous’

After this, Sir Simon Preston was taken prisoner and forced to walk to London, before finally being released. 

After Mary, Queen of Scots, returned from France in 1561, Sir Simon Preston became one of her most loyal supporters. In September 1563, Queen Mary spent a week at Craigmillar Castle as a guest. While she was there, she received the ambassador of Queen Elizabeth I, who warned her that if she wished to remain on friendly terms with England, that she should find herself an acceptable husband. 

Shortly after the birth of her son, the future James VI of Scotland, Queen Mary returned to Craigmillar Castle to again convalesce, where she stayed for three weeks. Mary was said to be depressed, either due to her marital troubles, or perhaps she was suffering from postpartum depression, which would not have been recognised at the time. Queen Mary remained at Craigmillar until the 7th of December 1566.