After a £500,000 facelift, taking two years to complete, the National Trust for Scotland has announced that Craigievar Castle is to completely reopen to the public in May. The 17th century castle, which is near Alford in central Aberdeenshire, has had extensive work done to get it back to looking how it originally did back […]
A new series of stamps by the Royal Mail have been issued, depicting the Stewart monarchs who ruled Scotland between 1406 and 1603, the year of the Union of the Crowns. The series starts with James I (1406-1437) and stops at James VI (1567-1603) who went on the become the king of England, uniting to […]
On the 4th of March, two of the ScotClans team (Amanda and Donald) went on a resource finding trip down and around the south west of Scotland. We took in a number of castles and places of interest along the way, as well as enjoying some beautiful scenery. When we set off from Edinburgh it […]
Tuesday saw the sad loss of Iain MacNeil, chief of The MacNeils of Barra. He was 80. A popular Chief he will be missed greatly, especially by the people of Barra. He was a remarkable man who led one of the oldest Clans in Scotland. Born in New York, Iain was also educated in the […]
By the middle of the sixteenth century the Border Reivers had a strangle hold on the lands on each side of the English Scottish Border. None more so than the Elliots and Armstrongs of Liddesdale. Murder, theft, arson, blackmail and feud were the canker of the Border Marches. Whatever resources, initiatives or amendments to the […]
By 1593 the feud that had existed between the Maxwells and the Johnstones, the two most powerful families in south-west Scotland, was to reach its zenith. The feud was long-standing as it had existed for over a century. Whilst the culmination of the feud would result in the Battle of Dryfe Sands which has already […]
The eldest son of ‘Auld’ (Old) Wat of Harden was William Scott who would succeed his father as Baron of Harden and be knighted by James VI. Harden House is still to be seen about three miles south of Hawick in the Scottish Borders as is the deep glen where Auld Wat hid the cattle […]
One of the visitors to our site told us about this great Clan Johnstone legend: The Battle of Dryfe Sands on the 6th of December, 1593 saw the Johnstones and the Maxwells fight it out near the town of Lockerbie. On the day of the battle Lady Johnstone went out with her maidservant to see […]
The Lords Forrester were a principal family in the Corstorphine area of Edinburgh. Their main home was Corstorphine Castle, a 14th century stronghold which, by the 18th century, was nothing but ruins, and today nothing of the castle remains but a 16th century dovecot. Sometime during the 17th century, a James Forrester was laird at […]
Sir John Carmichael of that Ilk was murdered in June 1600 by a party of Scottish Reivers as he rode from Langholm to Lochmaben to attend a Warden Court. Sir John was born in 1542, son to an illustrious family which hailed from Lanarkshire. He was a direct ancestor of the Earls of Hindford. He […]
