Fast Castle

Fast Castle stands on a narrow promontory jutting into the North Sea, four miles north-west of Coldingham in the Scottish Borders. The ruins occupy a plateau only twenty-seven metres wide and eighty-two metres long, guarded by cliffs up to forty-five metres high. A curtain wall with towers once ringed the edge, and a drawbridge crossed a deep ravine to the single entrance. The keep stood at the northern tip, overlooking the water below. A cave at the cliff base may once have served as a hidden way in or out. The site’s position made it a prize from the Iron Age onwards. Fast Castle first appears in records in 1333, when it was held by an English garrison raiding the countryside. Patrick Dunbar seized it in 1410 and later William Haliburton took Wark Castle in Northumberland. The Home family rebuilt it after 1522, hosting Margaret Tudor on her journey to marry James IV. Madge Gordon, a Coldingham widow, helped recapture the castle from the English in 1566. Sir Robert Logan, notorious for his part in the Gowrie conspiracy, once hired John Napier to hunt for treasure here. Today the remains show only foundations and a stretch of north-east wall. A concrete path now replaces the old drawbridge, leading visitors across the ravine. The steep trail from Dowlaw farm climbs to the plateau, offering views over the sea and along the coast. The cave below the cliffs still marks the spot where wreckers once lured ships onto the rocks. The castle’s sinister past inspired Walter Scott’s Wolf’s Crag and appears in Nigel Tranter’s novels. Kathleen Fidler’s children’s tale The Gold of Fast Castle also draws on its legends.