Tantallon Castle seen from the castle courtyard by Annie Lausberg-Pater

Tantallon Castle, which for me is one of the most beautiful castle ruins we have visited.

Tantallon Castle is a castle in the Scottish Borders region, built by the Douglas family in the mid-fourteenth century. The castle has been besieged three times. During the third siege in 1650, it was seriously damaged and abandoned.

The castle consists of a long wall of four meters thick, which protects the point of a cliff, which becomes the courtyard of the castle. There are three towers on either side of the wall and in the center. Access to the castle is via a footbridge, through a gate in the central tower. The front of the castle faces southwest.

In front of the wall there are some ditches and fortifications from around 1520. In the middle of the area shielded by these fortifications is a seventeenth-century stone dovecote.

Inside the wall there were originally several spiral staircases and rooms. During the work under James V, the rooms were bricked up to make the wall more resistant to the heavier artillery of that time. The central tower was also strengthened at this time by building a section with rounded corners in front of it, which reduced the damage that bullets could do. This tower is the best preserved. The two corner towers were seriously damaged during the siege of 1651. The left (northernmost) tower contained the earl's living quarters and is also called the Douglas Tower. This tower had six floors, compared to the five floors of the other two towers. There is a dungeon at the bottom of the Douglas Tower.

On the north side of the courtyard of Tantallon Castle there is a stone wing at right angles to the front. The wing was three stories high. This wing contained, among other things, the large hall, kitchen and sleeping quarters for the staff. This building is connected to the Douglas Tower.

A section of wall at the end of the cliff is a remnant of a structure that provided access to the beach at the bottom of the cliff. This building was never finished. There is also a well in the courtyard.