Edinburgh Castle

For fifty-seven years, from 1757 to 1814, those vaults held prisoners of war. The first recorded arrivals were the 78 crewmen of a French privateer from Dunkirk, marched up from Leith in April 1757; the worst crowding came during the American War of Independence, when, by the historian Chris Tabraham's count, almost a thousand men were packed into the vaults in July 1781. Most were sailors, many of them Americans, and they left graffiti: a door from vault 5 carries a gibbet dated 1781 and one of the earliest known depictions of the Stars and Stripes, and Tabraham matched names carved on it with crew lists in the French National Archives. The controlled haunting experiment usually attached to the castle, Richard Wiseman's study of April 2001 with 218 participants, was run in the South Bridge Vaults, about 800 metres to the east, and no study of that design has been published for the castle's own vaults.

The ghost stories of Edinburgh Castle gather in the vaults beneath the Great Hall, a set of stone-vaulted cellars reached from Crown Square by a steep dog-legged passage. The drop from the square is over four metres, and Chris Tabraham, in his study of the prisons for the Book of the Old Edinburgh Club (2008), suggests it may explain the passage's name, the Devil's Elbow. For fifty-seven years, from 1757 to 1814, the vaults held prisoners of war. On 28 April 1757 the Edinburgh Evening Courant reported that the 78-strong crew of a French privateer, the Chevalier Barte of Dunkirk, had been put ashore at Leith and marched up to the castle; Historic Environment Scotland's own page dates the first French privateers to 1758. The worst crowding came in the War of American Independence: had the prison reformer John Howard, who counted 64 men in July 1779, visited in July 1781 instead, Tabraham writes, "he would have found not 64 but almost 1000 men crammed into the vaults". By July 1799 there were around 750, against an optimum maximum put at 450. A mass breakout of 49 men in April 1811 ended the castle's main role as a prison of war, and the last inmates were marched to Leith in the spring of 1814. Tabraham lists the inmates as Americans, Danes, Dutch, French, Germans, Irish, Italians, Poles and Spaniards; HES says most were sailors, "many of them Americans fighting in the War of Independence". The door into vault 5 carries a gibbet dated 1781 with the words LORD NORD, and a "Stars and Stripes" flying from the stern of a brig, which Tabraham calls "one of the earliest known". This is what makes the vaults unusual as a "haunted" site: some of the prisoners have names. Tabraham matched the graffiti names on that door with the crew lists in prison records kept in the French National Archives, and another carver, ABRAHAM, cut his name three times into the stonework, perhaps the Abraham Le Duc who came from the Dutch frigate Zephyr in 1796.

Edinburgh Castle stands on Castle Rock at the head of the Royal Mile and is run by Historic Environment Scotland (HES). The Association of Leading Visitor Attractions counted 2,044,963 visits in 2025, a 3 per cent rise that kept it the most visited paid-for attraction in Scotland. HES's opening-times page, read on 23 September 2026, gives 09:30 to 18:00 from 1 April to 30 September, with last entry at 17:00, and 09:30 to 17:00 from 1 October, with last entry at 16:00. The castle closes at 16:00 on 24 December, does not open on 25 or 26 December, and opens from 11:00 to 17:00 on New Year's Day. The ticket page, read the same day, prices an adult ticket (16-64) at £23.50 online and £26.00 on the day, a child (7-15) at £14.00 and £15.50, and a concession (65 and over, or unemployed) at £19.00 and £21.00. The same page says tickets "often sell out far in advance, especially over the summer months", and that once they have sold out online none are sold at the castle. HES suggests "at least 2 hours" for the main attractions. The Prisons of War are the vaults below Crown Square. HES presents them as "a recreation of the vaults as they would have looked around 1800" and notes that "an early depiction of the 'Stars and Stripes' flag is scratched into a door". The 2008 study of the prisons in the Book of the Old Edinburgh Club records that three timber doors covered in graffiti survive from the vaults, "though they are no longer in situ". On the door into vault 5 it describes a gibbet with the date 1781 and the words LORD NORD, the flag flying from the stern of a brig, and the names of three seamen of the French frigate Rohan Soubise, captured in April 1781: Peter Garrick, Pierre Jean Lefèvre and Jean Jacques Ducatez, who also appear on the ship's crew lists of May 1781. HES's access guide gives the approach across the Esplanade as 110 m at an uphill gradient of 5 degrees, and says the vaults are reached by "numerous short flights of steps, with handrails on both sides". A courtesy vehicle carries visitors with limited mobility up to Crown Square, but not between 12:15 and 13:15, because of the One O'Clock Gun; the opening-times page says the gun is fired "every day at 1pm, except on Sundays, Good Friday, and Christmas Day". One exhibit has left. The Stone of Destiny, long shown at the castle, has been on display at Perth Museum since the museum opened in March 2024.