Fyvie Castle

The story

Fyvie Castle stands in the Aberdeenshire village of Fyvie, near Turriff, on a landscaped estate with a lake. Its oldest fabric goes back to the 13th century, and some accounts credit William the Lion with building a castle here in 1211. In its royal days Robert the Bruce held an open-air court at Fyvie, and the future Charles I spent four years of his childhood here.

After the Battle of Otterburn in 1388, Robert III granted Fyvie to Henry Preston, and it stopped being a royal stronghold. From then on it passed through five families in turn, the Prestons, Meldrums, Setons, Gordons and Forbes-Leiths, and each left its mark in the form of a new tower. The Preston Tower, the oldest, was built between 1390 and 1433. Alexander Seton raised the Seton Tower, which forms the grand entrance, in 1599, and a few years later added the celebrated wheel staircase. The Gordons contributed their tower in 1777, and the Leiths theirs in 1890.

Fyvie saw fighting during the Civil Wars: on 28 October 1644 Montrose and Manus O'Cahan fought the Covenanter army here, and the battlefield is now on Scotland's official inventory. From 1650 to 1652 the writer Anne Halkett lived at the castle with the Countess of Dunfermline, nursing wounded soldiers and local sick people and bargaining with officers of the Commonwealth army. In the 18th century Colonel William Gordon landscaped the grounds and the loch. The Scottish industrialist Alexander Leith, later Lord Leith of Fyvie, bought the estate in 1885, and in 1984 his family passed it by sale to the National Trust for Scotland. Inside are a wheel stair, arms and armor and portraits by Raeburn, Batoni and Gainsborough; outside, a walled garden grows Scottish fruit.

The woman at the center of Fyvie's best-known ghost story was real. Lilias Drummond, born around 1574, was the daughter of Patrick, 3rd Lord Drummond. In 1592 she became the wife of Alexander Seton, who would rise to be Lord Fyvie and then Earl of Dunfermline; she bore him four (some sources say five) daughters but no son. She died at Dalgety on 8 May 1601, at about 27 years of age. Within months, on 27 October 1601, Seton married Grizel Leslie.

The legend

Fyvie is rich in ghost stories and curses, and the National Trust for Scotland folds many of them into its guided tours. Martin Coventry, whose book Scotland's Ghastly Ghosts (2017) gives a detailed account, notes that a "Green Ladye" already appears in 17th-century documents.

The Green Lady. Tradition holds that Lilias Drummond was neglected or even starved by her husband, a claim Coventry finds no evidence for; she did not even die at Fyvie. The legend says that on Seton's wedding night with Grizel Leslie, the couple, sleeping in what is now the Drummond Room, heard moaning or scratching. In the morning the words "D LILLIES DRUMMOND" were found cut into the outer stone of the window sill, supposedly too high for anyone to reach. The lettering can still be seen. Lilias is said to wear green brocade and pearls and to carry a candle, though she is more often sensed than seen, through a scent of roses. Her appearances are said to warn of death or misfortune in the owning family: Coventry relates that Colonel Cosmo Gordon saw her beckon in 1879, that he died the day after his younger brother saw her curtsey in the Drummond Room, and that Alexander Gordon also glimpsed her shortly before his death. The oldest newspaper description we found, in the Richmond Dispatch of July 19, 1885, has her walk "the great staircase," and says she "was never known to appear to any but a Gordon, and then as a warning of approaching death." It does not name Lilias: this green lady is a member of the family who "went mad for love and grief" and died in "a black pool."

The Grey Lady. A second woman is linked to a secret chamber behind the Gun Room, where she is said to have been starved to death. Later accounts say a woman's skeleton was found there during building work and that, once the bones were buried, disturbances at the castle grew worse, calming only after the remains were returned and the chamber walled up again. The oldest report we found, in the Indiana Daily Times of February 23, 1920, warned that "Rumor and fact are strangely blended." Masons removing "a fungous growth from the wall" of the gun room found a "human skeleton," not said to be a woman's. After its burial in the village churchyard came "groans and mysterious knockings," and a maid named Massie declared she had seen, not a grey lady, but "the famous Green Lady" "walk across the floor of her bedroom." Some websites tie her to the medieval Meldrums, a weakly sourced idea, and Coventry suggests her story may have blended with Lilias's over time.

The Trumpeter of Fyvie. The ballad "Andrew Lammie," also known as "Mill o' Tifty's Annie" (Child Ballad 233), tells of the trumpeter Andrew Lammie and his doomed love for Agnes Smith, the miller of Tifty's daughter, who by tradition died in 1673. A statue of the trumpeter stands on the Preston Tower. Later tradition adds that his trumpet sounds when a laird of Fyvie is about to die, a supernatural detail that is not in the ballad itself.

The drummer. The Broad Ax of Salt Lake City, on December 16, 1916, the oldest report we found, told of a drummer boy captured by a lord of Fyvie, who refused to play for the enemy, was thrust into his own drum and thrown from the battlements. Whenever a member of the family is going to die, it said, he "sounds a warning by drumming through the long corridors." The Columbus Commercial of Mississippi repeated it on December 28.

The curses. Thomas the Rhymer, the 13th-century seer, is said to have been refused entry at the gate and to have foretold that, until three stones removed from a chapel came back, no family would keep Fyvie for long, and eldest sons would never inherit. One of the stones is shown in the Charter Room, where it is said to weep by turning damp. Coventry points to porous sandstone soaking up moisture, and sources disagree on whether one or two stones were ever recovered. A second curse is attached to a sealed dungeon or secret room, said to kill any man who enters and blind his wife.

Modern reports and investigations. A castle manager interviewed in 2012 described bedclothes pulled off sleeping guests by a sudden gust, a guest shaken out of bed, a shape standing at a bed's foot, a sighting in the Gordon Bedroom, the smell of roses and objects moving or vanishing, with activity said to peak in September and October, near the anniversary of Seton's remarriage. Most Haunted filmed here for series 6, episode 12, first shown on 28 June 2005. Robert Hardy narrated a BBC documentary, Castle Ghosts of Scotland, that included Fyvie, and the castle also appeared in STV's Castles of Scotland and in the 2004 CBBC children's show Spook Squad. A local group, East of Scotland Paranormal, recorded unexplained noises in 2008. Some websites also list an episode of Help! My House Is Haunted, which could not be confirmed.

What remains today

Fyvie is Category A listed, with towers added by successive families from the 14th to the 19th century. The Drummond Room window sill with Lilias's carved name, the weeping stone in the Charter Room, the wheel staircase and the trumpeter statue on the Preston Tower are all still there. The designed landscape around the loch is listed in Scotland's inventory of gardens.

Visiting

Fyvie Castle belongs to the National Trust for Scotland and is open to the public in season, with guided tours that include the castle's legends. Check the Trust's website for current opening days and prices before traveling. The secret chamber behind the Gun Room is sealed and not part of any visit.

Sources

1. FYVIE CASTLE, AB53 8JS Watching brief on garden wall repair FYC13/1 — Archaeology Data Service via Europeana · http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/
2. Fyvie Castle Environs Project 2010-12 — Archaeology Data Service via Europeana · http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/
3. Fyvie Castle, Fyvie, Aberdeenshire — Archaeology Data Service via Europeana · http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/
4. Fyvie Castle lighning trenches — Archaeology Data Service via Europeana · http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/
5. Fyvie Castle, Volume 73, 32-47 — Archaeology Data Service via Europeana · http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/
6. Wikimedia Commons category : Fyvie Castle — Wikimedia Commons
7. Fyvie Castle drummer legend, The Columbus Commercial, December 28, 1916 — The Columbus Commercial
8. Alexander Seton, 1st Earl of Dunfermline — Wikipedia — Wikipedia
9. Fyvie Castle — Sabhal Mòr Ostaig and Tobar an Dualchais via Europeana, 1960 · http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
10. Fyvie Castle — Martin Coventry, *Scotland's Ghastly Ghosts* (Goblinshead, 2017) — Martin Coventry, *Scotland's Ghastly Ghosts* (Goblinshead, 2017
11. Fyvie Castle, Turriff — European Heritage Awards Archive via Europeana · http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/
12. Mill o' Tifty's Annie (Andrew Lammie) — Wikipedia — Wikipedia
13. Official website
14. The Weeping Stones of Fyvie Castle — Hidden Scotland — Hidden Scotland
15. Wikipedia article — Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Text written by AI from the sources above and checked by a separate AI fact-check (how we work). Images: credits and licenses under each picture.