Dirleton Castle & Gardens

Dirleton Castle

The village of Dirleton lies two miles west of North Berwick. Set within it and contained by an estate wall is a magnificent garden which the Guinness Book of Records certifies as home to the world's longest herbaceous border.

Castle Roofline The West Side of Dirleton Castle The Close The Garden Steps The Dovecot

There is more to Dirleton Gardens than meets the eye. Viewed from the village you can see it contains an attractive domed dovecote. And from some angles you can also catch glimpses of a more substantial structure hiding amongst the trees.

But it takes active exploration to uncover the real secret of Dirleton Gardens. As you make your way through the trees you suddenly find yourself confronted by a remarkable edifice. Dirleton Castle comes into view, perched proudly on a rocky outcrop as improbable as it is impressive.

Your first feeling is that this has to be a fanciful ornament placed here by the designer of the garden as an attractive and ruinous folly. It isn't: what you stumble across in Dirleton Gardens is one of the very best castles in Scotland. If you like gardens, all the better. But even if you don't, this is still an absolutely must-visit castle: fascinating and beautiful, and far more complex than it at first appears.

What you see today was built in three phases. A castle comprising several circular towers and a complete curtain wall was built on the natural rocky outcrop at Dirleton by John De Vaux in the late 1200s. This original castle at Dirleton stuck closely to the outcrop, but with more extensive surrounding ditches than you see today.

Ownership of Dirleton Castle passed back and forth between the Scots and the English during the wars of independence of the 1200s and 1300s, and it was finally slighted by Robert the Bruce after the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 to prevent its future use by the English.

Entrance Bridge and Gatehouse

Stone Buffet in Great Hall

Vaults Beneath the Great Hall

The remains of the castle passed from the De Vaux family to the Halyburton family by marriage in the mid 1300s. They spent a good part of the following hundred years rebuilding and redeveloping Dirleton Castle. Much of its east side can be traced back to this period, including the great hall and the huge vaults below it.

The Halyburtons also filled in the ditch at the north end of the castle, partially building over it a range of buildings including a chapel and the withdrawing room above it. Below the chapel is the dank and gloomy prison: though this must have seemed pretty idyllic to the unfortunates who inhabited the 11ft square pit below the prison, where the truly unpopular prisoners were dumped.

In 1515 the estate passed, again by marriage, to the Ruthven family. Between efforts to gain power by kidnapping Scottish royalty (see our Historical Timeline), they turned their medieval castle into a semblance of a grand renaissance house. Their main surviving contribution to today's castle was the range of buildings to the south of the close.

Dirleton Castle's end came with Oliver Cromwell. It was used as a base by moss-troopers attacking his supply routes during his invasion of Scotland. Retribution, armed with cannon, arrived in 1651.

In 1663 the ruins of the castle were acquired by the Nisbet family, who built a modern mansion house at Archerfield, nearer the coast to the north west of the castle. During the 1700s and 1800s Dirleton Castle featured largely as a very grand garden ornament, passing into state care in 1923. It is now looked after by Historic Scotland.

Dirleton Castle Gardens in Early Spring