We decided to spend the day immersing ourselves in Scottish history, first stop Thirlestane Castle which is the home of the Duke of Lauderdale (the Maitland family). Although built on a small hill you can’t actually see it from the road, or from the entrance, but as you walk up to the main entrance it emerges from the trees. Slightly strangely there is a flight of steps up to the entrance and considering it was built in the 16th century rather unusual. Unfortunately we couldn’t take photos inside the building and talking to the guide in the first room they said it was because of insurance as criminals were taking photos and offering to steel things to order, not something we have heard before but unfortunately all too plausible. There were a number of rooms open, including possibly the best nursery we have ever seen, it was made up of 4 rooms, and had about 5 large dolls houses, numerous toy animals and musical instruments as well as board games that have been played with for hundreds of years. The castle had really thick walls as it was originally built for defence, but the ceilings are stunning, they were created over 4 years by the architect who should have been working on Holyrood house! It was used as a hospital during the first war and as a girls boarding school during the second, but luckily neither of these caused any damage or made major changes with the exception of one of the ceilings falling down when the girls were having a dance class!
After that we set off for Traquair House which is another house / castle that is Scotland’s oldest inhabited house, interestingly we were allowed to take photos in this house, they obviously paid extra insurance! The house has been lived in by the Stuart’s (of King James / Charles fame) since 1491. As Catholics and supporters of the Jacobites unfortunately over the years the cost of maintaining the house took its toll which also meant that actually it was not ‘beautified’ by the Victorians so is very much as it was during the 1700’s. As supporters of the Stuart’s, Mary Queen of Scots stayed here, also Bonnie prince Charles stayed here before setting off to try and claim the Scottish crown from the English, the 5th Earl closed the main gate after he left (in 1745) and said it wouldn’t be opened again until there was a Stuart back on he throne of Scotland. Entrance to the house is still by the ‘temporary entrance’ and the main entrance has been grassed over. On the top floor there is a Priest room and hidden exit which was behind the back wall of a cupboard and was hidden by shelves with books and other things hidden on it, during a raid the priest would exit via this staircase and into the fields, in addition, I hadn’t realised that although a number of catholic families had priests (hence the large number of hiding places such as priest holes) they actually make all of the vestments and alter cloths in white so that during a raid they could be mistaken for bed clothes. Having finished looking round the house we went into the chapel which was built after Catholic Emancipation Act in 1828, the dinning room (which is now in one of the wings) and finally stopped for ‘afternoon tea’ (with coffee) then headed back.
