History today

Roddy Martine talks...

It is curious how age catches up on you. As a schoolboy, I simply loathed being dragged off on weekend excursions to explore a dusty old church or poke around a ruined castle in that flat expanse of agricultural landscape that runs inland from Dunbar and across to the Lammermuirs. I could never understand how tombstones in graveyards could be even remotely interesting. Yet nowadays I find them fascinating. And when I think back on that time, I realise that my sudden awakening stemmed from a single incident.

One of my father's great friends was Dr James Richardson, a big bear of a man, then well into his eighties, who in his prime had exalted in the title of Her Majesty's Inspector of Ancient Monuments in Scotland. Dr Jimmy lived on the sea-front in North Berwick and we would collect him in my father's Humber Hawk, then set off with a picnic lunch to places like Tantallon Castle, the formidable Douglas fortress overlooking the Bass Rock in the North Sea, or Borthwick Castle where Mary Queen of Scots took refuge with the Earl of Bothwell after their wedding on 15th May 1567.

And it was at nearby Hailes Castle, another stopping off place for Mary and Bothwell during that long ago escapade, that everything was put into perspective for me.

Dating from the 13th century and much knocked about by Oliver Cromwell when he invaded Scotland in 1650, Hailes Castle is today nothing more or less than a shell maintained by Historic Scotland, and I was standing at a window on the second fl...

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• By : Roddy Martine
• In : Roddy Martine's World
• Issue : 5
• Page : 7
• Words : 993