Qualla: Old Slains Castle https://qualla.com/old-slains-castle en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:25 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/n/w/old-slains-castle-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Old Slains Castle https://qualla.com/old-slains-castle Old Slains Castle: Introduction https://qualla.com/old-slains-castle/ Photo credit Mike Shepherd 999, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 1 November 1594, Aberdeen Town Council shipped twenty stone of gunpowder up the coast to a five-storey keep at Collieston, along with pickaxes, shovels, and a stonemason named John Fraser. King James VI had given the order. Francis Hay, ninth Earl of Erroll, had sided with a Catholic rebellion in the north, and James had decided to settle the matter not by siege but by demolition. The blast brought down most of the keep. Two walls met at a corner and refused to fall. They are still there, four centuries later, jutting out of the Aberdeenshire cliff like the broken edge of a torn page.

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Image: Mike Shepherd 999 | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/n/w/old-slains-castle-wp/gfnw-old-slains-castle-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Old Slains Castle: From the Comyns to the Bruce https://qualla.com/old-slains-castle/ Photo credit Mike Shepherd 999, CC BY-SA 4.0. The castle was built in the thirteenth century by the Comyns, Earls of Buchan, the family that briefly held a real claim to the Scottish throne. After they backed the wrong side in the Wars of Independence, Robert the Bruce stripped them of their estates and handed Slains to Sir ...

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Image: Mike Shepherd 999 | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/n/w/old-slains-castle-wp/gfnw-old-slains-castle-from-the-comyns-to-the-bruce.mp3 0:06 2 full Old Slains Castle: The Earl, the Rebellion, and the Gunpowder https://qualla.com/old-slains-castle/ Photo credit Bill Harrison, CC BY-SA 2.0. Francis Hay, 9th Earl of Erroll, hosted what one chronicler called so many English and Scottish Catholics in his tower that he was put to great expense. In April 1589 James VI rode north to Aberdeen and placed a royal garrison at Slains, but Erroll slipped the leash and joined th...

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Image: Bill Harrison | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/n/w/old-slains-castle-wp/gfnw-old-slains-castle-the-earl-the-rebellion-and-the-gunpowder.mp3 0:06 3 full Old Slains Castle: The Guidwife of Clochtow https://qualla.com/old-slains-castle/ Photo credit Bob Embleton, CC BY-SA 2.0. Erroll's wife, Elizabeth Douglas, Countess of Erroll and a personal friend of Anne of Denmark, came north in 1595 with masons to repair the keep. They could not save it. She moved instead into a farmhouse called Clochtow, just north-west of the ruins, and stayed there long after ...

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Image: Bob Embleton | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/n/w/old-slains-castle-wp/gfnw-old-slains-castle-the-guidwife-of-clochtow.mp3 0:06 4 full Old Slains Castle: What Time Did Next https://qualla.com/old-slains-castle/ Photo credit Mike Shepherd 999, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 31 May 1979, after four hundred years of standing through North Sea storms, the south-facing wall of Old Slains finally let go. An estimated hundred tonnes of rubble fell across the coastal road, blocking traffic and partially burying a lorry that happened to be passing. The t...

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Image: Mike Shepherd 999 | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/n/w/old-slains-castle-wp/gfnw-old-slains-castle-what-time-did-next.mp3 0:06 5 full