Dunbar Castle – Queen Joan’s Last Redoubt
Professor Richard Oram
Most visitors to Dunbar who venture down to the East Lothian town’s harbour barely glance at the few stumps of stonework that rise like broken teeth from the crusted blood-red sandstone headland at its northern end. Yet, down to the sixteenth century, this was one of the strongest fortresses in Scotland, perched impregnably on the summit of its rock. Connected to the mainland by a low, narrow neck of land, the site drew the attention of settlers in search of security from attack for centuries before the first castle was built. From the late eleventh century to the 1430s, this was the chief stronghold of the heads of the House of Bamburgh or, as they became known in Scotland, the Dunbar family, holders of the earldom of Dunbar or March.
Dunbar Castle became famous in chronicle accounts from the 1338, when it was defended by ‘Black Agnes’, otherwise Agnes Randolph, countess of Dunbar, for six months against the besieging English army commanded by the Earl of Salisbury. Later myth tells of her and her maids dusting away with cloths the debris from where the English catapult-balls had struck the castle walls and throwing bread from her castle stores into the ranks of the starving English attackers. Under her command, though, the castle held out and the enemy were forced to withdraw.
Through the fourteenth century, the Dunbars were amongst the greatest nobles in the kingdom but, because of where their lands lay, they had often steered a dangerous course between allegiance to the Scottish or English crowns. Doubtful loyalty was one amongst many reasons for why James I seized the castle and earldom lands in 1434 and stripped the family of their titles in 1435, yet it was the forfeited earl’s brother who pursued the king’s assassins in February 1437 and was seriously injured in the attempt. Despite his loyal endeavours, Dunbar remained in royal hands after 1437 and became one of the last properties that Queen Joan retained after she was deprived of power and influence in the government for her young son, James II. It was there, defended by one of her few remaining allies Adam Hepburn, lord of nearby Hailes Castle, sick and worn out after at least eleven pregnancies in twenty years and under siege by her enemies, that she died on 15 July 1445.
Such was Dunbar’s importance for the defence of south-eastern Scotland that successive kings and regents added to its already formidable fortifications through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The most remarkable of these additions is the great artillery bastion that crowns the rock stack adjacent to the main castle rock on the north side. This was built in the early 1520s, when the castle was strengthened on the orders of John, duke of Albany, regent for the child King James V. Originally connected to the main castle by a passage in the thickness of a screen wall – the last remnants of which collapsed in 1993 – it was a then state-of-the-art example of European military engineering. The main surviving fragments of the castle proper are portions of the gate towers which controlled the steeply-climbing entrance-way leading to the rock’s summit. Behind that are sections of low wall and shapeless masses of collapsed masonry from the buildings that once clustered around the courtyard. The eastern end of the castle, once including a great round tower, has gone, blasted away to create a new entrance to the harbour in the nineteenth century.
Although reduced to a few enigmatic fragments, this last foothold in Scotland held by Joan Beaufort is a striking and evocative site, whose strength is unmistakable despite its utter ruin. Due to the dangerous state of the ruins and the crumbling cliff edges, the castle’s interior is inaccessible at present, closed off behind a high metal fence. It can be viewed closely from the outside, some of the best views being from the adjoining headland beside the town’s modern swimming-pool.