Linlithgow Palace

The ruins of Linlithgow Palace stand in the town of Linlithgow in West Lothian, fifteen miles west of Edinburgh. The palace was one of the principal residences of the monarchs of Scotland in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A royal manor stood on the site from the twelfth century. English forces under Edward I enclosed it with a timber palisade and outer ditch in 1301–02 to create a fortification known as the Peel, which secured the supply route between Edinburgh Castle and Stirling Castle. Work began in March 1302 under two priests, Richard de Wynepol and Henry de Graundeston, to designs by Master James of St George.

In September 1302 sixty men and 140 women helped dig the ditches, the men paid twopence and the women a penny a day. A hundred foot-soldiers were still labouring on the castle that November, and work continued through the summer of 1303. The Peel was retaken for Scotland in September 1313 by an ordinary Scot named William Bynnie or Bunnock, who sold hay to the garrison. When the gate was opened for him he halted his wagon in it so that it could not be shut, and he and his seven sons came out from under the hay and took the place for Robert the Bruce. The king sent reinforcements and had the Peel dismantled so that it could not be taken back.

Fire partly destroyed the town in 1424, and James I began rebuilding the palace as a grand royal residence — a palace rather than a heavily fortified castle, perhaps with Sheen Palace in England in mind. Matthew the Painter decorated the royal apartments in 1433, and over the following century the building grew into a formal courtyard with substantial additions by James III and James IV.

James IV kept up the work and tipped the masons for it, a payment known as drinksilver — eighteen shillings in April 1489 and two gold angel coins that September. In November 1497 he sent the master mason of Linlithgow to Stirling to draw up plans for his new lodgings there.

Mary, Queen of Scots was born at Linlithgow in December 1542. In March 1543 the English ambassador Ralph Sadler came to see her, and Mary of Guise had the infant shown to him out of her swaddling; Sadler wrote that she was as goodly a child as he had seen, and like to live. The blacksmith William Hill was employed about then to fit iron window grilles, called yetts, to make the palace more secure.

After the Union of the Crowns in 1603 the court moved largely to England and the palace was little used. The north range, called very poor in 1583 and ruinous in 1599, fell at four in the morning on 6 September 1607; the Earl of Linlithgow wrote to the king that the north quarter was fallen, roof and all, within the walls to the ground, and that the inner wall looked every moment as though it would fall and break the king's fountain.

James VI had the north range rebuilt between 1618 and 1622, with carving designed by the mason William Wallace. In July 1620 the architect James Murray of Kilbaberton estimated 3,000 stones' weight of lead for the roof at £3,600 Scots, and the lead came from Leadhills in Lanarkshire. The king planned to visit in 1622 and never returned to Scotland. The palace was described as ruinous again in 1668. Its last royal moment came in September 1745, when Bonnie Prince Charlie passed through on his march south without staying the night — the fountain, it is said, was made to run with wine in his honour.

The Duke of Cumberland's army destroyed most of the buildings on the night of 31 January to 1 February 1746, by accident, when lamps were left on straw bedding. Long neglected, the palace passed to the Commissioners of Woods and Forests with its grounds in 1832 and to the Office of Works in 1874, with major consolidation in the 1930s and 1940s. Historic Environment Scotland maintains it now; 103,312 people visited in 2019, and for more than forty years tours for children have been led by Junior Guides, pupils of Linlithgow Primary School.