Scotland's best known palaces – and their lesser known stories

Most people would associate Scotland with castles, and I will get to them later in the series, but while we have much fewer palaces than castles, they have still played their part in the history of this nation and today I am going to feature the best-known of these palaces.

The word palace derives from Palatium, meaning the Palatine Hill in Rome, which was the location for imperial houses during the era of the Roman Empire. Across Europe, secular and church rulers built grand houses and named them as a palace – palazzo in Italy, palais in France.

READ MORE: The engineering wonder created by Robert Louis Stevenson's grandfather

The difference between a palace and a castle is that the latter starts life as a fortification and can sometimes have a palace added to it – as was the case with Stirling Castle – while I like to think of palaces as grand homes with a crucial ingredient being ornate rooms and painted interiors.

In Britain there is an unwritten rule that palaces should always be associated with royalty, though some of the more ancient palaces were created for bishops, while newer buildings are rarely classed as palaces, with Blenheim Palace, built for the victorious Duke of Marlborough by a grateful government, one of the few exceptions to the royal rule.

Another exception to the royal rule is Dalkeith Palace in Midlothian, though its originator Anna Scott, 1st Duchess of Buccleuch, did have a royal connection as she had been married to James, 1st Duke of Monmouth, who was the illegitimate son of King Charles II by his mistress Lucy Walter.

The Duchess had inherited estates and titles from her family, and Monmouth took her name of Buccleuch as w ell as the earldom of Dalkeith. He met a bad end, however, as he was beheaded for treason on July 15, 1685, for leading the eponymous Monmouth’s Rebellion against King James VII and II. The Duchess remarried and gained even more wealth so that she was able to build Dalkeith Palace, completed in 1711.

It was built on the same site as the fortified medieval castle and palace of the Earls of Morton acquired by Francis, 2nd Earl of Buccleuch, in 1642. The Duchess called on the services of James Smith, the architect who is credited with introducing the Palladian style into Scotland. Smith’s previous work included extending Hamilton Palace and designing Canongate Kirk in Edinburgh – the former is long gone, the latter still stands.

Various generations of the Buccleuch family modified and extended Dalkeith Palace which these days is the centrepiece of Dalkeith Country Park. Its website states: “Many eminent guests have been entertained at Dalkeith over the years. Bonnie Prince Charlie (above) stayed here during the Jacobite Rebellion year of 1745.

“King George IV slept here during his visit to Edinburgh in 1822, in preference to Holyroodhouse Palace, which was then in poor repair. Queen Victoria also visited in 1842.”

Having mentioned Hamilton Palace, I shall deal with its history now and show how it met a tragic end. Once considered the grandest house in Britain, Hamilton Palace was the seat of the Dukes of Hamilton and was transformed twice in the late 17th and early 19th centuries, the first project under the control of James Smith and the second overseen by Glasgow architect David Hamilton, completed in 1834 and paid for by the Hamilton family’s vast income from Lanarkshire coalfields that they owned.

The palace’s magnificent state rooms and its art collections and libraries made it the social centre of Scotland for decades in the 19th century, but William, 12th Duke of Hamilton, was more interested in horses rather than houses, and eventually ran up huge debts which were paid for by the sale of art and furniture from the palace – one estimate is that the sale in 1882 raised what would nowadays be considered as £85 million.

The palace fell into disrepair and eventually it was realised that the coal works underneath the building were a threat to its stability. The Court of Session gave approval for its demolition in 1919 and proving the excellence of its construction, it took 12 years to demolish Hamilton Palace.

Another palace which has no royal connections apart from a king’s visit is Culross Palace (below).

Situated in the royal burgh of Culross in Fife, the palace is really just a large house which was built between 1597 and 1611 by a wealthy merchant, Sir George Bruce, whose main claim to fame is that he created the world’s first under-sea coal mine, sinking shafts under the Firth of Forth.

Bruce’s brother Edward had built Abbey House, some of which still stands, before Sir George built his house which was quickly named a palace due mainly to its exquisite interiors. These include the extraordinary Painted Chamber which for me entitles the house to be called a palace.

King James VI was certainly impressed by Bruce’s house and mines as he visited them on his sole return visit to Scotland in 1617 after he became King James I of England in 1603.

Culross Palace has featured in the television series Outlander and the burgh is often used for films and television series as it is an almost perfectly preserved settlement from the 17th and 18th centuries.

Somewhat grander and with definite and very ancient royal connections is Scone Palace just north of Perth. Moot Hill at Scone was of course the crowning seat for the Kings of Scots for centuries, and Scone was probably the capital of the kingdom of the Picts before that.

The actual seat on which those ancient kings were crowned was the Stone of Scone, or the Stone of Destiny, allegedly stolen by King Edward I of England in 1296 and which will return to Perth next year.

The first palace at Scone was the home of the Abbot of Scone Abbey which did not survive the Reformation of 1560. In the early years of the 17th century, King James VI gave the lands at Scone to his ardent follower, David Murray, who was made the first Lord Scone and later became Viscount Stormont.

A descendant of the first Lord Scone became the Earl of Mansfield and the palace has been home to that branch of the Murray family ever since.

The modern palace was designed by William Atkinson and was completed in 1807. Again it really is a palace because apart from the magnificent rooms, it has a truly outstanding collection of art while the gardens, including the famous Murray Star maze, are a rock or in themselves with the giant Douglas firs planted by David Douglas himself.

Now I turn to the undoubted royal palaces. Falkland Palace in Fife started life as a hunting lodge and then became a castle in the 13th centuries. The castle and its lands were owned by the MacDuff earls of Fife and there was certainly a substantial building on the site in 1402 when Robert Stewart, the Duke of Albany, imprisoned his nephew and rival to the Scottish throne, David Stewart, Duke of Rothesay, in a cellar in the palace where Rothesay died, allegedly of starvation.

Albany never did take the throne and King James I had his son Murdo executed and seized Falkland for the Crown.

It became a favourite of the Stewart royals, and two kings in particular, James IV and his son James V, transformed Falkland into a true renaissance palace, with the latter king adding a real tennis court in 1541 – it remains the oldest such court still in use in Britain. James V’s only child, Mary, Queen of Scots, visited Falkland often and played real tennis.

Her son James VI was staying at Falkland in 1592 when rebel earls led by Francis Stewart, 5th Earl of Bothwell, launched a coup attempt. James had often used Falkland Palace for diplomatic meetings and knew the palace intimately, using that knowledge when Bothwell came a-calling. For a couple of days the future of James VI and his wife Anne, and thus the current royal family, hung in the balance until Bothwell was eventually “persuaded” to leave the palace. He later went into exile.

During the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, troops of Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army occupied the palace, and they were blamed for the horrendous fire which ruined the buildings. It was not until more than two centuries later that the palace was restored to its previous glories when John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, bought the ruin in 1882 and began the 20-year project that ensured the future of the Palace. It is now in the care of the National Trust for Scotland.

Another royal palace which has had a central role in Scottish history is Linlithgow Palace in West Lothian (above). There was a royal manor on the site from around the 12th century and it was later surrounded by fortifications and became known as Linlithgow Peel, a peel being a tower or castle.

That work was undertaken by English soldiers who occupied the Peel in 1302 when Edward I had Scotland mostly under his control after the English victory at the Battle of Falkirk in 1298.

The Peel was recaptured by the Scots in 1313 when an ordinary farmworker called William Bynnie delivered his usual cart of hay to the garrison. He stopped his cart to block the Peel gate and he and his seven sons then leapt out of the hay to capture the Peel which King Robert the Bruce promptly had dismantled.

When Linlithgow was partly razed to the ground in the great fire of 1424, King James I saw the opportunity to build a new residence for the royal family and their courtiers. Deliberately planning a palace rather than a castle, James also sanctioned the rebuilding of the Church of St Michael adjacent to the new palace.

The Stuart dynasty improved the palace and in 1503, it was given to Margaret Tudor who had married James IV. Their son, the future James V, was born at Linlithgow Palace in April 1512, and it would play a big role in his life, not least because his wife Mary of Guise developed it as a royal home.

Their daughter Mary, Queen of Scots (above), was born at the palace on December 8, 1542, and just a few days later at Falkland Palace, James V was given this news as well as a report of his army’s defeat by an English army at the Battle of Solway Moss – he is said to have muttered “it (the Stewart Dynasty) cam wi’ a lass and it will gang wi’ a lass” before he died just a few hours later.

Mary loved Linlithgow and visited it often during her life before her abdication and exile, and her son James VI also used it and gave it to his Queen Anne of Denmark before he went south to take the throne on England in 1603.

Hardly used, Linlithgow Palace decayed fast with one of its walls collapsing in 1607. James VI and I paid for refurbishment but with only one royal visitor – King Charles I in 1633 – the palace continued to deteriorate until 1746 when troops from the Duke of Cumberland’s army set fire to it, apparently accidentally, on their way north to Culloden.

It remains in Crown hands and is in the care of Historic Environment Scotland.