Roslin Castle

The Sinclairs, or St Clairs, held Roslin from 1280 and built the first castle in the late 14th or early 15th century, perhaps under Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney and Baron of Roslin. His son Henry, second Earl of Orkney, made a new rectangular keep with rounded corners at the south-west. The chosen promontory lay near the 1303 Battle of Roslin site, where Scots defeated English forces.

A fifteenth-century scriptorium made Roslin an important setting for written culture. Five St Clair manuscripts dating from 1488 survive in the National Library of Scotland, among them the Rosslyn-Hay manuscript, described as the earliest extant work in Scots prose. A domestic fire damaged the castle in 1452; tradition says the earl’s anxious manuscript collection was lowered to safety from a window by his chaplain.

The Earl of Hertford burned Roslin during the War of the Rough Wooing in 1544, almost totally destroying the keep. The later ruin still preserves one of its walls, while the collapsed remains of the others form the mound below. This loss led to a substantial late-sixteenth-century rebuilding rather than a simple repair of the original castle.

The late-sixteenth-century campaign built a five-storey east range into the rock and replaced the drawbridge with a permanent stone bridge at a rebuilt gatehouse. In 1591 the Laird of Roslin was forfeited and William Leslie held the castle for the Earl of Huntly; the rebel Earl of Bothwell briefly stayed, leaving coffers of clothes and silver plate when he departed hurriedly.

The upper east range was renovated in 1622 with Renaissance carving, but Roslin was hit by General Monck’s artillery in 1650 and by a Reforming mob in 1688. Though dilapidated by the eighteenth century, part of the east range stayed habitable. Simpson and Brown restored it from 1982 to 1988, securing the range that is now leased as holiday accommodation.