Edzell Castle and Garden

The first stronghold at Edzell stood not where the present ruin stands but on a mound 300 metres to the south-west, a timber motte and bailey built in the 12th century to guard the mouth of Glenesk, the pass leading north into the Highlands. It was held first by the Abbott family, then by the Stirlings of Glenesk, and in 1358 passed to the Lindsays when Sir Alexander de Lindsay married the Stirling heiress Katherine Stirling; his son David became Earl of Crawford in 1398.

Around 1520 David Lindsay, who inherited Edzell in 1513, abandoned the old motte site and built a new tower house and courtyard on more sheltered ground overlooked by higher ground to the north, a siting that suggests defence mattered less than comfort. He became Earl of Crawford in 1542 and, around 1550, added a large west range with a new entrance gate and hall, while also building Invermark Castle further north, possibly as a hunting lodge.

Mary, Queen of Scots stayed at Edzell for two nights in August 1562 while touring the north to subdue the rebellious Earl of Huntly, convening a meeting of the Privy Council attended by the Scottish nobility during her visit; a room was still remembered as the Queen's chamber in 1573. Her son James VI came twice, in 1580 and again in August 1589, when the Earl of Erroll submitted to him at Edzell and word arrived of the assassination of Henry III of France.

David Lindsay, the 9th Earl's son, was knighted in 1581, became a Lord of Session under the title Lord Edzell in 1593, and joined the Privy Council in 1598. In the late 16th century he added a north range with round corner towers, and in 1604 laid out a walled garden celebrating the recent Union of the Crowns. He died in 1610, heavily in debt from fines over his son's conduct, leaving both the garden and the north range unfinished.

The castle escaped the campaigns of the Marquess of Montrose in the 1640s, but in September 1651, during the Third English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell's invading troops occupied it for a month. By 1689 the Lindsay lord had turned Episcopalian and was barred from the parish church, holding services instead in the great hall; decline set in around the failed Jacobite rising of 1715, when the last Lindsay laird sold Edzell to the 4th Earl of Panmure, himself a Jacobite, for £192,502 Scots.

Panmure's own support for the rising cost him his lands, and the Crown sold Edzell to the York Buildings Company, a London waterworks firm that had branched into trading forfeited estates and proceeded to asset-strip the property. Government troops caused further damage in 1746, and by 1764 the bankrupt company had stripped even the roofs and sold off the contents to pay its creditors; the avenue of beech trees linking castle and village was felled soon afterwards.

The estate passed to William Maule, Earl Panmure, then to his nephew George Ramsay, 8th Earl of Dalhousie, whose family appointed a resident caretaker from the 1870s and built the cottage, now the visitor centre, in 1901. The walled garden entered state care in 1932 and the rest of the castle followed in 1935; Historic Environment Scotland now maintains both as a year-round visitor attraction, with the motte and castle protected as Scheduled Monuments.