Qualla: Tantallon Castle

Tantallon Castle: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stephencdickson, CC BY-SA 4.0. One wall. That is the trick of Tantallon. The builders did not bother with the other three sides because the North Sea had already done that work, cutting cliffs into the headland on the south-east, north-east, and north-west. So William Douglas, 1st Earl of Douglas, raised a single curtain of red sandstone across the only approach, over 15 metres tall, three and a half metres thick, ninety metres long, and let geology guard the rest. It was the last medieval curtain-wall castle Scotland would ever build. By the time it rose in the mid-14th century, the design was already old-fashioned, but as a statement, it was unanswerable.

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Image: Stephencdickson | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tantallon Castle: The Red Douglases

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alexander Nasmyth, Public domain. Tantallon belonged to the Red Douglases, a branch of the family that began when George Douglas, illegitimate son of the 1st Earl of Douglas, inherited his mother's Earldom of Angus in 1389. The Black Douglases ran the main line; the Reds ran Tantallon. In 1397 George married Prin...

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Image: Alexander Nasmyth | Public domain

Tantallon Castle: The Siege of 1528

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Renata (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus, married James IV's widow Margaret Tudor in 1514 and tried to use his stepson, the boy-king James V, as a puppet. The conspiracy unravelled badly. When the sixteen-year-old James V escaped Angus's grip in 1528, he declared his stepfather attai...

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Image: Renata (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Tantallon Castle: The Covenanters' Ruin

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kim Traynor, CC BY-SA 3.0. Tantallon outlived the Tudors and the Stewarts as a working fortress but not the religious wars. The Douglases stayed Catholic after the Reformation, and in 1639, while William Douglas, newly created Marquess of Douglas, was in Edinburgh during the First Bishops' War, the Presbyt...

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Image: Kim Traynor | CC BY-SA 3.0

Tantallon Castle: What You See Today

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Karora, Public domain. The Douglas Tower at the north-west corner has half-collapsed into the sea, but the curtain wall still stands its full height. Inside the main gatehouse the entrance passage shows its layered defences: drawbridge, three pairs of doors, portcullis, machicolations punched into the ...

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Image: Karora | Public domain