Hawthornden Castle, Medieval castle and writers retreat in Midlothian, Scotland
Hawthornden Castle is a castle in Midlothian, Scotland, built on a steep rocky cliff above the River North Esk near the village of Lasswade. It combines a tower from the 1400s with an L-shaped house added in the 1600s, giving the building a layered, uneven silhouette when seen from the gorge below.
The property was held by the Abernethy family in the 1200s, then passed through the Douglases before Sir John Drummond took ownership in 1540. His descendant William Drummond, a poet who lived there in the early 1600s, received the writer Ben Jonson as a guest and shaped the castle's long connection to literature.
The castle takes its name from the hawthorn trees that grow along the gorge below, giving the place a distinctive setting that writers still find conducive to work. Today it operates as a private residency where a small group of authors from around the world stay together for several weeks each year.
The castle is privately run as a writers retreat and is not open to general visitors, so the building can only be seen from the footpaths that run along the North Esk river gorge below. The surrounding woodland is accessible on foot and offers a clear view of the cliff face and the base of the structure.
Directly beneath the castle, cut into the rock, is a network of caves that can be reached from inside the building. One of the chambers is said to have sheltered Robert the Bruce, and the same rock contains a carved dovecot with over 300 individual nesting compartments.
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