Bavelaw Castle

Bavelaw Castle stands on a ridge above Threipmuir Reservoir in the Pentland Hills, four miles west of Penicuik and two miles south of Balerno. It is a Category A listed building, a historic house with a long and layered past. The earliest parts date from the 16th century, when Walter Dundas built an L-plan tower house on the site. Before then, the Braids and the Fairlies had owned the land, and later it passed through the Forresters of Niddry and the Mowbrays of Barnbougle. King James VI and Mary, Queen of Scots both reputedly stayed here as guests of Laurence Scott of Harperrig, who enlarged the house after acquiring it in 1628. The present building shows the marks of several centuries of change. Scott added a small wing at the south-east angle, but by the 19th century the castle had fallen into ruin. In 1900 Sir Robert Lorimer restored and extended it, linking the outbuildings to the main block and opening up the attic with a new turret. A further round of alterations came in 1938, when the firm Dick Peddie & McKay reshaped parts of the structure. The harled rubble walls rise three storeys high, with a circular tower projecting from the north-east corner and a smaller one-storey wing to the south-east. Inside, the ground-floor rooms are vaulted, and the northern chamber sits lower than its neighbour, suggesting it may be the oldest part of the original tower. This difference in height continues on the upper floors, where the first-floor northern chamber is known as Queen Mary’s Room. The attic gained extra space in Lorimer’s restoration, and large windows now let light into rooms that once looked out over the hunting grounds of the Pentland Hills. The reservoir below reflects the castle’s grey walls, linking the building to the wider landscape of the hills.