Dundarg Castle

Dundarg Castle stands on a rocky headland two kilometres north-northeast of New Aberdour in Aberdeenshire. Built inside the walls of an Iron Age fort, it occupies a triangle of gently sloping ground ringed by twenty-metre-high sandstone cliffs. The name comes from the Gaelic for ‘red fort’, describing the colour of the stone. The site was once a small Celtic monastery before becoming a medieval stronghold. Historians W. Douglas Simpson and Charles McKean compared it to the nine castles of the Knuckle and even to Tintagel. The Book of Deer from the 10th century mentions a fortified place at Aberdour nearby. The castle was raised in the 13th century by the Comyn family and dismantled in 1308, probably by Robert the Bruce. Alice Comyn, Countess of Buchan, and her husband rebuilt it in 1334, but it was slighted at once after a siege led by Sir Andrew Moray. Excavations in 1911–12 and 1950–51, directed by W. Douglas Simpson, uncovered medieval objects from these two destructions. The only surviving medieval structure is the inner gatehouse, standing about five and a half metres tall. Its upper part was rebuilt in the mid-16th century, possibly after a coastal defence order, and may have been fitted with gunloops. The site was abandoned in the mid-17th century. Today the castle ruins and the promontory fort are protected as a scheduled monument. A modern house built in 1938 on part of the site uses stone from the former Aberdour Free Church. The cliffs drop sharply to the surrounding land, giving views across the Moray Firth. Visitors can walk the triangle of ground and see the gatehouse remains standing within the old ramparts. The contrast between the medieval ruins and the later house adds to the site’s layered history.