About
Hermitage Castle stands alone in the remote valley of Liddesdale in the Scottish Borders, a massive and forbidding tower fortress that seems to grow from the moorland itself, surrounded by empty hills and the sound of wind and water. It is one of the most atmospheric historic sites in Scotland — a place where the weight of dark legend and violent history is inseparable from the physical experience of the building. The castle is architecturally unusual: its four massive corner towers are connected at the upper level by flying arches, creating a distinctive silhouette that has no parallel in Scottish architecture and gives the ruined fortress a brooding grandeur that visitors find immediately striking.
The site's history stretches back to the thirteenth century, when the de Soules family built the original castle. William de Soules, who held Hermitage in the early fourteenth century, was condemned for witchcraft and treason against Robert Bruce in 1320 and his family's possession of the castle forfeited. The castle passed through several hands before becoming associated with the Douglas family, whose conflicts with the Scottish crown ran through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Knight of Liddesdale, William Douglas, was murdered here by his godson in 1353, and later Francis Stewart, Earl of Bothwell — one of the most turbulent figures of the sixteenth century — held Hermitage as his principal seat.
Most famously, Hermitage Castle is associated with Mary Queen of Scots and her traumatic visit of October 1566. Learning that her favourite, James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, lay wounded at Hermitage after a border skirmish, Mary rode from Jedburgh to visit him — a round journey of approximately fifty miles across difficult Border terrain, accomplished in a single October day. The journey left her exhausted and seriously ill; she fell into a coma at Jedburgh shortly after and nearly died. The reckless devotion that the journey demonstrated contributed to the scandal surrounding her relationship with Bothwell, who became her third husband the following year.
Historic Environment Scotland manages Hermitage as a seasonal staffed site, open April to September. The forbidding exterior, the dramatic interior spaces, the legendary associations, and the incomparable setting in one of Scotland's emptiest and most beautiful valleys make it one of the most memorable castle visits in the country.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- Hermitage is a genuinely remote site — check that it is open before making the journey. The drive from Jedburgh takes 45 minutes via winding single-track roads; from Carlisle about 45 minutes.
- Visit on a grey or overcast day if possible — the castle looks at its most atmospheric under brooding skies, which suit the site far better than bright sunshine.
- Combine with Jedburgh Abbey (30 miles north) for a morning of Border heritage — both are HES sites and the HES Explorer Pass covers both.
- Fill up with fuel before visiting — there are no petrol stations in Liddesdale. Newcastleton village (5 miles) is the nearest settlement with any services.
- Bring picnic supplies — there are no refreshment facilities at the castle, and the surrounding landscape makes for excellent picnicking on a fine day.
- Allow time to walk along the Hermitage Water — the riverside path is beautiful and the contrast between the gentle valley and the brutal castle is part of the experience.
- Photography is best from the south, where the full extent of the castle and its flying arches can be captured against the hillside backdrop.
- For those with an interest in Border ballads, the castle features in several of the great Scots ballads collected by Walter Scott — reading relevant ballads before visiting significantly enriches the experience.
Highlights
The Fortress Architecture and Flying Arches
Hermitage Castle's exterior is one of the most powerful and distinctive in Scotland, dominated by four massive corner towers connected at the upper level by a series of flying arches that bridge across the entrance faces of the towers. This arrangement — unique in Scottish castle architecture — was probably intended to provide additional internal floor space at the upper levels and to create fighting platforms above the main doorways, but its visual effect is something stranger and more unsettling: the arches transform what would otherwise be a stark rectangular fortress into something that looks almost organically grown from the moorland.
The walls are of prodigious thickness, built in local grey stone that has absorbed centuries of Border weather into a surface of extraordinary texture and colour.
Standing outside the castle and taking in its silhouette against the empty hills and sky, visitors invariably describe a sensation of unease or awe that is not purely aesthetic — the castle seems to carry in its stones the weight of the dark history associated with it.
Mary Queen of Scots and the Liddesdale Ride
The single most famous episode in the history of Hermitage Castle is the extraordinary visit of Mary Queen of Scots in October 1566, which has become one of the defining romantic legends of Scottish history. Mary was at Jedburgh conducting a justice ayre — an official court session — when she learned that her favourite, James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, lay wounded at Hermitage after a border skirmish with the notorious reiver Jock Elliot of the Park.
Overriding the advice of her counsellors and heedless of the dangers of the journey, Mary rode to Hermitage and back — approximately fifty miles across difficult Border moorland, crossing rivers and bogs in the autumn rains — within a single day.
The visit lasted only a few hours; Bothwell was recovering from his wounds and the meeting was probably brief. But the physical toll of the journey, combined with the emotional strain of the preceding months, left Mary exhausted and dangerously ill: back in Jedburgh she fell into a coma so deep that her attendants believed her dead.
The incident deepened the suspicions surrounding her relationship with Bothwell, who became her third husband the following spring — a union that destroyed her reign.
The Liddesdale Setting and Border Landscape
Hermitage Castle stands alone in the valley of Liddesdale — a remote and beautiful landscape of moorland hills, the Hermitage Water, and open sky that has changed remarkably little since the medieval period. The valley runs northwest from the English border through some of the emptiest countryside in the Scottish Borders, a terrain of peat bog, heather, and rough pasture that was, in the medieval period, the heartland of the Border reivers — the lawless raiding families whose cross-border cattle-stealing defined the culture of this region for centuries.
The castle's position was strategic: it controlled the head of Liddesdale and the principal route southwards into England through the Cheviot hills.
Today the drive down from Hawick or up from Newcastleton takes visitors through a landscape that conveys better than any museum the physical isolation that shaped the history of this extraordinary place.
William de Soules and the Legends of the Castle
Hermitage Castle is surrounded by a tradition of dark legend that reflects the violence and isolation of its history. Most of the legends cluster around William de Soules, who held the castle in the early fourteenth century and is one of the most notorious figures in the Border tradition. According to the legends — which blend historical fact with folklore in a characteristically medieval way — de Soules was a practitioner of black magic who made a pact with a demon familiar and used the castle for unspeakable rites.
His political treason against Robert Bruce was historically real: he was convicted in 1320 and sentenced to imprisonment for life in Dumbarton Castle. But the legends went much further, depicting him as a warlock whose supernatural powers made him immune to ordinary weapons and who was finally destroyed by being boiled alive in molten lead on Nine Stane Rig, a prehistoric stone circle on the nearby moor.
The legends are almost certainly fictitious, but they capture the genuine menace that the castle exuded to the local population through centuries of violent ownership.
Collections
Hermitage Castle's collections and finds from archaeological investigation at the site are held in the national collections managed by Historic Environment Scotland and the National Museums of Scotland. The site itself, with its dramatic ruined fabric and landscape setting, is the primary interpretive medium.
A small display within the castle provides historical context for the castle's principal associations.
Hermitage Castle: Fortress at the Edge of the World
On-site interpretation covering the castle's architectural development, the de Soules, Douglas, and Hepburn families, the legends of the castle, and Mary Queen of Scots' legendary Liddesdale ride of 1566.
📍 Castle interior
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.