Edzell Castle and Garden

The beauty of Edzell was a statement of the prestige of its owners, the Lindsays. The stylised walled garden was created around 1604. Adorned with heraldic sculptures and carved panels, the architectural framework surrounding the garden is unique in Britain.

The garden also includes walled flower and nesting boxes and a delightful summer house.

This is a remarkable and very beautiful complex, with a late-medieval tower house incorporated in to a 16th century courtyard mansion, and a walled garden with a bathhouse and summer house laid out in 1604.

The Garden was built for Sir David Lindsay, Lord Edzell, about 1604 and was recreated in the 1930s. The carved decoration of the garden walls is unique in Britain. The carvings depict the Planetary Deities, Liberal Arts and Cardinal Virtues.

Visitors enter through the summer house to discover nesting holes and flower boxes set into walls, and decorative hedges shaped and trimmed into the Fleur de Lys, Scottish thistle and English rose and the family mottoes of the Lindsay family: "dum spiro spero" (while I breathe I hope) and "endure forte" (endure firmly). Sir David intended his garden to stimulate both mind and senses, and it does.

This property is managed by Historic Scotland.

The earliest part of Edzell Castle is a tower house and courtyard built in the early 16th century. This replaced an earlier motte castle that was a few hundred metres away (the mound is still visible). The castle was home to the Lindsay family, who had inherited the estate through marriage in 1358.

Around 1553 a new block was built along the west side of the courtyard. This contained a new entrance, a kitchen and storerooms at ground level, and private rooms above. Towards the end of the 16th century Sir David Lindsay added another range of buildings in the northwest corner of the courtyard. This included a large kitchen in the basement with a hall on the floor above, and private accommodation in a round tower projecting from the northwest corner. Sir David's most notable contribution is the walled garden built to the south of the courtyard. This is considered to be one of the most remarkable castle gardens in Britain. The formal planting dates from a restoration in the 1930's, but the highly decorative walls were built in 1604. The walls were designed to allow flowers to be planted in niches to reproduce the heraldic devices of the Lindsay family. In between these heraldic displays are carved panels that represent the Planetary Deities, Liberal Arts and Cardinal Virtues. A summer house was built at one corner of the garden with a bath house on the opposite corner.

The castle was occupied by Cromwell's soldiers for a month in 1651, and by Argyll Highlanders during the Jacobite Rising of 1745. The last Lindsay laird had been forced, through debt, to sell the castle to the Earl of Panmure in 1715. Following the Jacobite Rising in which he took part, Lord Panmure's estates were forfeited and came into the possession of the York Buildings Company. When the company became bankrupt in 1764, Edzell Castle was gutted for its building materials and sold on behalf of the creditors.

Highlights

• The ‘great garden’ – a unique, and very beautiful, addition to the castle residence, best seen when the bedding plants are in full bloom.

• The summer house – this delightful little building in a corner of the garden was where the Lindsays relaxed of a fine summer’s evening.

• The tower house – a fine example of a typical 16th-century nobleman’s residence.

• The Lindsay Aisle – the family’s burial vault in the ancient graveyard.

A noble residence

Edzell Castle is enchanting. The red sandstone castle walls, set amid pleasing green parkland, conjure up an image of a noble bygone age. Medieval society was not all fighting and feuding. Everyday lordly life in late-medieval rural Scotland is more readily understood at Edzell than at most castles.

Edzell was home to the Lindsays. When they acquired the estate in 1358, the lordly seat was a timber residence beside the ancient church. During the 16th century, they built a brand-new castle a short distance away – the one we admire today. The ‘icing on the cake’ of their new residence was the wonderful ‘great garden’, added in 1604.

The ‘lichtsome’ Lindsays

The Lindsays were a gifted, turbulent and tragic noble family. They were known as the ‘lichtsome [carefree] Lindsays’. Their head became Earl of Crawford and one of the most powerful men in the realm. In the mid-1400s David, the 3rd Earl, made Edzell a separate inheritance for his younger son, Walter, and the castle remained with this junior branch for the rest of its days as a Lindsay residence.

For a time in the 16th century, this junior branch also held the earldom of Crawford in the person of David, 9th Earl. It was he who began building the new residence. It was centred on an impressive tower house, with state apartments in the gatehouse range, and additional family rooms along the north side of the courtyard. The family’s most famous guests were Mary Queen of Scots, in 1562, and her son James VI, in 1580 and 1589.

Alas, the family fell on hard times. In 1715 they were forced to sell Edzell because of mounting debts. With their departure from the scene, Edzell’s days as a noble residence were over.

The ‘great garden’

The family’s greatest building achievement at Edzell was the wonderful walled garden. It was added by the 9th Earl’s son, David, Lord Edzell, in 1604. The present garden layout was recreated in the 1930s. However, the garden’s most arresting and original features are its four enclosing walls, which display a series of unique carved panels. These portray the Seven Cardinal Virtues, the Seven Liberal Arts and the Seven Planetary Deities. Sir David’s intention was clearly to provide a stimulus both for the mind and the senses. His garden is unique in Europe and gives the castle a distinctive place in the art history of the European Renaissance.