Darnaway Castle, Moray
Photo © Anne Burgess, August 1990
Darnaway Castle, Moray
Photo © Anne Burgess, August
1990
This view of the castle shows the building of 1810. Behind it is the earlier 16th century Randolph's Hall, which boasts a fine hammer beam roof, and the portrait of the murdered 'Bonnie Earl o' Moray'.
Darnaway Castle is located in Darnaway Forest, 3 miles (4.8 km) southwest of Forres in Moray, Scotland. This was Comyn land, given to Thomas Randolph along with the Earldom of Moray by King Robert I. The castle has remained the seat of the Earls of Moray ever since. Rebuilt in 1810, it retains the old banquenting hall, capable of accommodating l,000 men. The hall is the only remaining portion of the castle that was erected in 1450 by Archibald Douglas, Earl of Moray, and retains its 15th-century hammerbeam roof, making it one of only two medieval halls in Scotland with its original roof, "a specimen almost unique in Scotland."
Sir Thomas Randolph probably built the first castle. John, 3rd Earl, died at the Battle of Neville's Cross in 1346 without male heirs, and the earldom went to Patrick Dunbar, who was the husband of one of John's daughters. The male line of the Dunbars failed around 1430, and the earldom went to the Douglases. When Archibald Douglas died in battle on May 1, 1455, fighting with his brothers against King James III, who had decided to curb the power wielded by the Douglases, the Moray title and estates were forfeited along with various other Douglas possessions. It now passed to the Murrays, and then to the Stewarts, with whose descendants it remains.
To the south, where the River Findhorn rushes through a gorge, Randolph's Leap
commemorates the sort of long-jumping usually associated with Rob Roy MacGregor.
It was probably not attempted by Earl Randolph, but by his quarry, Alastair
Comyn of nearby Dunphail. Darnaway Estate has a visitor centre and acres of
hardwood forests. The castle is still occupied.
DARNAWAY CASTLE, Morayshire.
Of this ancient seat of the Earls of Moray little now remains; but fortunately, whilst almost all the masonry is new, the ancient oaken roof of the hall has been preserved, and is a specimen almost unique in this class of work in Scotland. The open timber roofs of the Parliament Houses at Stirling and Linlithgow have entirely disappeared, as well as those of Doune, Dirleton, Tantallon, and all the larger castles of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The fine roof of Darnaway, the smaller one of the House of the Knights of St. John in Linlithgow, and that of the Parliament House, Edinburgh, are almost all that remain to give an idea of what these others must have been.
Darnaway Castle is situated on a rising ground in the midst of an extensive forest not far from the river Fiudhorn, and about three miles from Brodie Railway Station.
A castle was originally built here by Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, who was Regent during the minority of David II., and the present building is traditionally said to be Randolph's castle. It appears however from the Exchequer Accounts that the existing ancient hall was begun by Archibald Douglas, Earl of Moray, about 1450. The Earl being forfeited, the King allowed the building to be proceeded with in the style of grandeur and solidity which Douglas had contemplated. In 1810 a large new castle was erected in front of the ancient hall, and connected with it, so that the hall forms part of the existing mansion. The walls have however been greatly altered. The old Statistical Account describes it before the alterations as an ancient pile 89 feet long and 35 feet wide, having a balcony in the outer end, with a music gallery above, from side to side. There was a large chimney in the opposite end, and another spacious fireplace on one of its sides.
The modern fireplace in the north side of the hall probably occupies the position of the latter, but the other fireplace and the balcony and gallery have been swept away.
All that now remains of the ancient hall is the open timber roof. It is well preserved, and is of fine dark oak. From its style it seems to belong to the latter half of the fifteenth century. In constructive design it somewhat resembles the roof of the hall of Edinburgh Castle, which was probably erected by James V. The design is in this respect rather weak. The principals of the roof are very varied in design, but they have all the fault, like those at Edinburgh, of not having a proper tie. They evidently belong to a late period of Gothic art; the variety of the forms of the rafters is in itself an evidence of this. The simplicity and purity of the earlier forms, of which so many specimens exist in England, is here conspicuously absent.
It is only in its general effect, not in detail, that this roof can suggest the probable appearance of those of a simpler and earlier style, of which we have a solitary example in the House of the Knights of St. John.
The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland by David Macgibbon and Thomas Ross 1889