Craigmillar Castle

The inner curtain wall is a particularly useful clue. A traditional reading of an armorial panel produced the date 1427, but HES regards this interpretation as questionable. Some original gun openings point towards a date no earlier than around the middle of the fifteenth century. The circular corner towers and projecting parapet belong to this defensive enclosure, while the wider outer courtyard represents a further stage in the castle's development.

Craigmillar was also a home for a family closely involved in Edinburgh's civic life. Halls, private rooms and service spaces supported residence and hospitality as well as protection. During the English campaign of 1544 the castle was surrendered; a later account describes its burning. Subsequent rebuilding may reflect that damage, but it would be too precise to assign every altered room to a single destructive episode on the strength of those accounts alone.

Mary, Queen of Scots visited in 1563 and returned in November 1566. Her later stay followed a difficult year that included the murder of her secretary David Rizzio, the birth of Prince James and serious illness. These events explain the atmosphere of political strain without turning Craigmillar into the immediate refuge from Rizzio's murder in March. The queen's presence is documented; the certainty often attached to other stories about the visit is not.

The supposed Craigmillar Bond is the most important example. Later accounts connect discussions here with a plan to remove Mary's husband, Lord Darnley. No copy of the alleged bond survives, and HES notes that many historians doubt whether such a document existed. Mary's knowledge or approval cannot simply be assumed. This is a historical controversy worth retaining, but it must not become a confident scene in which named conspirators sign an extant agreement before the queen.

In 1660 Sir John Gilmour bought Craigmillar and substantially remodelled the west range. Its more comfortable apartments express another phase of domestic ambition within the older enclosure. The family eventually moved away, and the castle lost its residential role in the later eighteenth century. It entered state guardianship in 1949. The preserved ruin therefore combines medieval building, later adaptation and modern conservation, rather than surviving wholly untouched from Mary's lifetime.

Give the courtyards and wall circuit as much attention as the tower itself, using only the areas currently open. Compare the different ranges before looking out towards Edinburgh. Doors, stairs and changes in masonry help distinguish the layers without needing to solve every architectural uncertainty. Craigmillar's atmosphere comes from the relationship between those layers: an important urban family's country residence, a documented royal visitor, disputed political memories and a later household seeking comfort within inherited walls.