Dunbar Castle

The Votadini, also known as the Gododdin, a British people of the Iron Age and early historic period, are thought to have been the first to fortify this rocky headland, and its early Brythonic name, dyn barr or 'the fort of the point', preserves their presence. By the 7th century the site had passed to the Kings of Bernicia, an Anglian kingdom that had overrun the earlier British kingdom of Bryneich, and Dunbar had become one of their principal defensive positions on this stretch of coast.

In 678 the Northumbrian churchman Saint Wilfrid was imprisoned at Dunbar after his expulsion from the see of York by King Ecgfrith, a sign of the castle's role as a place of secure custody for the powerful. Dunbar was later said to have been burnt by Kenneth MacAlpin, King of the Scots, and record confirms that he did at some point hold the castle, marking an early shift of the site into Scottish hands.

By 1005 a Patrick de Dunbar was recorded fighting the Norse under King Malcolm II, and the first stone castle here is thought to have been raised soon after by Gospatric, Earl of Northumbria, who fled to Scotland following William the Conqueror's harrying of the north of England. Malcolm III granted him the manor of Dunbar and lands across East Lothian, the Merse and Lauderdale in return for loyalty, founding the family line that would hold the earldom for centuries.

In June 1338 Sir Alexander Ramsay of Dalhousie broke through to relieve the castle and reinforce Black Agnes, Countess of Dunbar, who together saw off a prolonged English siege led by William Montagu, 1st Earl of Salisbury. It was through the castle's dark postern gate onto the rocky shore, tradition holds, that Ramsay's men and their provisions were smuggled in past the besiegers.

The earldom's fortunes reversed in 1457, when George, Earl of March, was forfeited and the castle dismantled to keep it from English hands. James IV had it restored by the century's end: master mason Walter Merlioun completed the gatehouse, a well was dug, and in 1497 the king himself visited to reward his masons, work that transformed a slighted ruin back into a functioning royal fortress.

Through the 16th century Dunbar was rebuilt again and again by whoever held it: French garrisons under the Duke of Albany added an artillery bulwark in the 1520s, Italian and French engineers strengthened it further for Mary of Guise in the 1550s, and it was burned by the Earl of Shrewsbury during the Rough Wooing in 1548 before being repaired once more. Mary, Queen of Scots stayed here repeatedly through the 1560s, and was brought to the castle by the Earl of Bothwell in April 1567 shortly before her defeat at Carberry Hill.

Parliament ordered Dunbar's final destruction in December 1567, decreeing that it and the fortress on Inchkeith be cast down so thoroughly that no foundation would ever again invite rebuilding. The demolition proved so costly that it was never fully finished, but by 1568 stone from the ruins was already being carried off for reuse at the quayside in Leith.