Kellie Castle

Kellie Castle stands below Kellie Law in the East Neuk of Fife: its oldest walls raised about 1360, its east tower dated 1573 for Margaret Hay, and the range that links them finished in the first years of the 17th century. By 1878 it was, in the words of the two architects who surveyed it, an utter wreck, nearly floorless and roofless, the home of rooks and owls. That September an Edinburgh professor of public law, James Lorimer, moved his wife and six children in under a thirty-eight-year lease and had a Latin inscription cut over the door: this dwelling, snatched from the crows and the owls, is dedicated to honourable leisure amid labours. Two of those children became famous, the architect Robert Lorimer and the painter John Henry, and the Arts and Crafts garden the family made is now protected in its own right. Kellie is often listed as haunted. The claim is real but thin: it traces to a single unsourced clause, and nothing in the published accounts of the castle, including the guidebook written by its last private owner, mentions a ghost.

The best-documented fact about Kellie Castle is carved over its front door. When Walter Wood published The East Neuk of Fife in 1887 he copied the inscription: "Hoc domicilium corvis et bubonibus ereptum, honesto inter labores otio consecratum est." MacGibbon and Ross, surveying the building the same year for their Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland, copied it too, and added the date and initials cut beneath it: A.S. M.D.CCC.LXXVIII, J.A.H.L. The two transcriptions differ by a single letter in the numeral; MacGibbon and Ross read 1878, which is the year the family's own account gives. The Latin was composed by Sir Alexander Grant, Principal of Edinburgh University and a colleague of the new tenant, and it says that this dwelling, snatched from the crows and the owls, is dedicated to honourable leisure amid labours. Crows and owls were not a figure of speech. "Previous to 1878 the house had been abandoned for many years, and had become an utter wreck, nearly floorless and roofless, and choked full of ruins and rubbish, the home of rooks and owls," wrote MacGibbon and Ross, who drew the plans. The oldest walls, the lower stage of the north-west tower, go back to about 1360, when Helena Siward, lady of Kellie, resigned the lands to her kinsman Walter Oliphant, married to a daughter of Robert the Bruce. The east tower carries the initials M H and the date 1573, for Margaret Hay, daughter of the Earl of Errol, whom the fourth Lord Oliphant married that year; the range that links the two towers was finished in the first years of the 17th century. The Oliphants sold in 1613 to Sir Thomas Erskine, who had killed Alexander Ruthven during the Gowrie conspiracy of 1600 and was made Earl of Kellie in 1619. After the contents were sold at a "muckle roup" in 1829 the castle was left to the weather: the Great Hall served the home farm as a granary, and part of the building was let as lodgings for the manager of a coal mine at Balcormo. James Lorimer, Regius Professor of Public Law at Edinburgh, was asthmatic and had found that the air of the East Neuk suited him. By 1876 the family were taking holidays as far east as Crail, and it was from The Priory in Pittenweem that they came upon Kellie. Lorimer already knew the owner: the two were co-trustees of the estate of an orphan called Forbes. A lease of thirty-eight years was agreed on the terms of an improving tenant. The Earl would make the castle wind- and weather-proof; Lorimer would pay a modest rent and do the interiors himself. In September 1878 the family slept there for the first time: the professor, his wife Hannah Stodart, and their six children, Jim, John, Hannah, Alice, Louise and Robert. The first-hand description of what they found was written by the youngest daughter. "It was left to the rooks and the owls who built in its crumbling chimneys and dropped down piles of twigs which reached far out into the rooms," Louise Lorimer wrote. "Great holes let the rain and snow through the roofs, many of the floors had become unsafe, every pane of glass was broken, and swallows built in the coronets on the ceilings... The garden still encircled by a tumble-down wall, was a wilderness of neglected gooseberry bushes, gnarled apple trees, and old world roses, which struggled through the weeds, summer after summer, with a sweet persistence." Louise did not only describe the garden. The statutory record of it, the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes entry maintained by Historic Environment Scotland, states that the garden "was laid out by Sir Robert Lorimer, helped by his mother, Hannah Lorimer, his sister Louise, and brother John". Robert's plan for it is dated 1888, and by 1905 it had matured enough for Gertrude Jekyll to write about it. The eldest daughter, Hannah Cassels Lorimer, took a University of Edinburgh Certificate for Women in moral philosophy and geology in 1880 - a certificate and not a degree, because women could not yet graduate - and her youngest sister, Caroline Louise - the Louise of the garden and of the account above - took three more in 1882 and 1886. Both chose geology. Hannah ran a European art course out of the small Pittenweem post office; according to a recollection by David Sladen, reported by the historians Sara Albuquerque and Luciana Martins, she "caught the trick of the beautiful moulded plaster ceilings at Kellie" from the craftsmen working in the house and was on that basis entrusted with the moulded plaster ceilings of Lord Bute's house in Fife. She married Everard im Thurn in 1895; the orchid watercolours she painted in British Guiana are at Kew. Professor Lorimer died in 1890 and his widow held the tenancy after him. In the Dictionary of Scottish Architects' list of Robert Lorimer's commissions, Kellie appears three times: survey drawings in 1887, the doocot and the garden house in 1900, and "alterations and additions" in 1916, the year his mother spent her last summer there. His elder brother John Henry, the painter, then held the lease, with his studio in one of the towers, until he died at the age of eighty. A second muckle roup followed and the castle stood empty again. What saved it, Hew Lorimer wrote in 1971, was "almost entirely... the creative gift, the perfect taste and the sheer industry of Mary McLeod Wylie", who had married him in 1937. The young couple took the lease on the old terms. Mary lined nearly forty pairs of curtains by hand, recovered most of the upholstered furniture herself, and kept more than twenty flower arrangements fresh through the house from spring to autumn. In the garden she was helped by Jim Dowie, the former gardener, who came back at seventy, replanted from memory, relaid the whole box edging of the herbaceous borders, and died at eighty at work in the garden. When the Lorimers bought Kellie is less certain than it looks. Hew Lorimer's guidebook says 1948, and that year has been copied ever since. The same paragraph, however, says the purchase followed an agreement with the Historic Buildings Council for Scotland - a body created by section 2 of the Historic Buildings and Ancient Monuments Act 1953 - and that the sale happened because "the old Earl" had died and his grandson decided to sell. Walter John Francis Erskine, 12th Earl of Mar and 14th of Kellie, died in 1955 and was indeed succeeded by his grandson. Historic Environment Scotland's Inventory record dates the purchase to 1958. On the guidebook's own account, 1948 cannot stand. Mary Lorimer died in 1970. Hew offered Kellie to the National Trust for Scotland and it was bought that year for 20,000 pounds - castle, garden, a cottage and eleven acres - of which the Secretary of State for Scotland found 15,000 from the National Land Fund, the balance coming from the Pilgrim Trust and from an anonymous life member of the Trust who also gave 50,000 towards the endowment. The contents cost a further 10,000 and were placed in the Trust's care on condition that they stayed at Kellie. Hew Lorimer set down plainly why the sale had happened at all: "It is in the hope that her achievement, within the context of the great house, can be given some permanence that it has been acquired with contents by the National Trust for Scotland. For it was the life's work of a rare artist." He kept part of the east tower until 1990, was appointed OBE in 1986, and died on 1 September 1993 in a nursing home in St Andrews. The castle is listed category A; the garden entered the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes in 1987, rated outstanding as a work of art and outstanding both historically and architecturally. It has been worked organically for about three decades and reached full Soil Association organic status in 2025, after its vegetables were certified in 2023 and its apples, pears and plums in 2024.

Kellie Castle and Garden belongs to the National Trust for Scotland and opens by season. The address is Kellie Castle, Anstruther, Pittenweem, Fife KY10 2RF; telephone 01333 720271; email [email protected]. It lies about three miles north-west of Pittenweem, and the Trust warns that some route planners and sat-navs send drivers to the wrong place on that postcode - follow the brown National Trust for Scotland signs instead. A Flexibus from local villages can be pre-booked on 01382 540624. Everything that follows was taken from the Trust's own pages in mid-2026 and will date; check before travelling. Castle, shop, tearoom and garden are closed from 1 January to 6 March. From 7 March to 31 October they open daily: castle 10.00-17.00, shop from 09.45, tearoom to 16.30 with last orders at 15.30, garden dawn to dusk. From 1 November to 24 December they open Saturdays and Sundays only, 10.00-16.00. The estate and its woodland walk are open dawn to dusk all year round. The castle interior is seen by guided tour, at 10.30, 12.00 and 14.00, booked through the Trust's events page; open guiding is sometimes offered instead, and parties of more than twelve should contact the property in advance. Prices in July 2026 were 14 pounds adult, 11 concession, 8 child, 38 family, 25 one-adult family and 1 pound with a Young Scot card, plus 4 pounds for the car park; members go free, car park included. Those admission prices were carrying a temporarily reduced 5 per cent VAT rate under a government scheme, so expect them to move. Access is the real limitation. The shop, tearoom, toilets and garden are wheelchair-accessible and there is disabled parking beside the castle, reached by following the signs from the main car park. The castle itself, though, is a tower house of the 14th to 17th centuries whose rooms are reached by narrow turnpike stairs with no lift, and the Trust publishes a detailed accessibility guide that is worth reading before you go. Toilets are open 10.00-17.00 from 1 April to 31 October only. Dogs on a lead are welcome in the garden and across the grounds. There are honeybee hives on the site. Beyond the castle there is a woodland adventure playground, and in the old stables an exhibition on Hew Lorimer with his studio reconstructed as it was at the time of his death.