Hello and welcome to Stories of Scotland, a podcast exploring the fascinating history, nature and folklore of Scotland.

I'm Jenny, a wannabe vampire.

And I'm Annie, an archivist turned vampire hunter.

Wait, what?

So in this episode, we are continuing our journey

through the history and stories that haunt the ragged walls

of both old and new slain's castles.

Both of these ruins sit atop steep cliffs on the Aberdeenshire

coastline looking out into the stormy North Sea. In the last episode we explored the history of

the haze of Errol, how they came to own Old Slane's castle, and why King James 6th ordered the castle

to be destroyed with cannons, gunpowder, and of course, shovels. If you haven't listened to that

episode, I do recommend going back and listening to it now, just so that you're all caught up on

the context train and we get the download numbers.

If you have listened, you'll remember that the last episode ended with Francis Hay,

the 9th Earl of Errol, returning from his exile, renouncing his Catholicism,

and slotting surprisingly quickly back into Scottish High Society. He could not return so easily back to Old Slane's Castle

as it was all but a pile of rubble.

Those shovels had really done their job.

And so he sets about building a bigger, better, bolder castle, imaginatively called New Slane's Castle.

And he accomplished his alliterative goals because New Slane's Castle is massive.

It was built around the turn of the century, in the late 1500s and early 1600s.

The initial structure was added to in 1664

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