Old Tulliallan Castle

Old Tulliallan Castle stands beside the Forth in Fife, its ruins rising above a drained marsh once crossed by ferries. The first fortification here was strengthened by Edward I of England before 1304, when the site was called Tolyalwyn. A later L-shaped tower of ashlar masonry was built by the Douglasses, with ribbed vaults and an unusual ground-floor hall. The castle was surrounded by a moat fed from the firth, and posterns led to vaulted chambers still described as imposing in 1885. The Douglas house was enlarged in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, adding new wings and refinements. The castle passed through the hands of William Douglas, the 1st Earl of Douglas, and later to the Edmiston family in 1402. Sir James Edmiston received royal confirmation in 1456, and his daughter Elizabeth brought the estate to Patrick Blackadder as dowry. Their descendant Robert Blackadder became Archbishop of Glasgow in 1492, adding the crypt in Glasgow Cathedral. Another laird, Sir John Blackadder, was beheaded in 1531 for killing the Abbot of Culross in a land dispute. The Blackadders supported Mary, Queen of Scots at Carberry Hill in 1567, but their fortunes declined under mounting debts. Visitors find grass-grown mounds marking the old foundations and a vaulted chamber with groined arches resting on an octagonal column. The moat’s edges remain visible where the Forth once lapped closer inland. A bronze kettle, said to have hung from the roof boss, was dug from the ruins and is linked to a legend that the castle stood while the pot held gold. The modern castle, built in 1818–1820, lies half a mile away and now serves as the Scottish Police College, its grounds overlooking the same river that once shaped Tulliallan’s history.