- Aug 1, 2013
- 5 min read

White Ladies, Wicked Lairds, and WT Stead at Hermitage Castle….

“Haunted Hermitage, Where long by spells mysterious bound,

They pace their round with lifeless smile.

And shake with restless foot the guilty pile,

Till sink the mouldering towers beneath the burdened ground.”

“Haunted Hermitage, Where long by spells mysterious bound, They pace their round with lifeless smile. And shake with restless foot the guilty pile, Till sink the mouldering towers beneath the burdened ground.” – See more at: http://www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/spiritualism/hermitage.php#sthash.rlmK35D9.dpuf

Miss Jessel will shortly be departing these shores in pursuit of her governess duties. However, before leaving Old Blighty she decided to venture Up North from the Metropolis for a visit. Together we took a trip into the Scottish borders and visited the isolated and brooding ruins of Hermitage Castle. It was a somewhat wet and blustery day, and black and white photographs seemed to capture the bleak atmosphere of the place better than colour so here are a few of my pictures, along with a little bit of the history of the castle and some of the very juicy legends associated with this bloodiest of border strongholds.

The Castle

Its history is one of bloodshed, revenge, betrayal and dark magic.

Eventually three more towers were added to the central one, including a well tower and a prison tower. The last tower to be added was the Douglas Tower, added in the 16th Century and providing kitchens on the ground floor and well-appointed apartments for the Earl and his family on the upper floors. The apartments included a double arched window, fine fire-places and en-suite latrines, so although the Hermitage has always been a strong hold rather than a home, some luxuries were provided. Even the higher status captives in the prison tower were provided with a latrine…not so the common ones who were simply flung in a deep dark hole and left to rot at the laird’s pleasure.

However, as noted, Hermitage Castle was primarily a defensible position in very hostile territory. As such it has few windows. The openings that seem to look like large windows running round the very top of the castle are actually doors on to a long vanished wooden fighting platform. This platform also explains the two dramatic flying arches that help to give the castle its forbidding air (looking in part like gigantic demonic gateways…). The flying arches allowed the platform to run straight from one tower to the next without having to cut in and out again between the towers.

In the late 16th Century, as gunpowder threatened older castles, the Hermitage fell under Crown control, more defensive features were added including horizontal gun holes, allowing greater manoeuverability for cannons; and later till the large ravelin (grassy mound) in front of the West approach to the castle – the other sides were safe from artillery carriages due to the bog and river.

Dark deeds in the Debatable Lands

Hermitage Castle’s history is one of bloodshed and treachery – its strategic importance meant it occasionally fell into English hands; and more than one

Some of its occupants exploits have passed into folk-lore and legend.

Wicked Lord Soulis and Robin Redcap

De Soulis however was a very dark magician, and it was whispered he had made a pact with the devil who promised him immunity from harm by iron weapons or hanging. De Soulis could call upon the devil in the form of Robin Redcap when he needed an assistant for his dark deeds. The locals believed that De Soulis was kidnapping and sacrificing children during his rituals; in fear and desperation they sought out famous local seer Thomas the Rhymer for advice on how to kill one who was impervious to iron weapons or hanging.

The villagers followed Thomas the Rhymer’s advice to the letter – overpowering the Wicked Lord and taking him to nine stane rig, a nearby stone circle, where they killed him in the following manner –

The Boiling of Bad Lord Soulis

On a circle of stone they placed the pot, On a circle of stones but barely nine, They heated it up red and fiery hot, Till the burnished brass did glimmer and shine.

They rolled him up in a sheet of lead, A sheet of lead for a funeral pall, They plunged him in the cauldron red. and melted him lead bones and all. [1]

The guidebook takes a slightly more prosaic view, noting that the Wicked Lord Soulis was killed by his servants before the family relocated to Hermitage Castle. The legend goes to show how much a grain of truth can be embroidered after an individual has died – especially one with an already evil reputation.

Lord Soulis ghost is supposed to return every seventh year to the vaults in which he sacrificed his victims. His terrifying spectre and the frightful screams of his innocent victims have been heard on more than one occasion.

The Cout of Keilder

The tale of a terrifying knight possessed of magical armour is sometimes linked to

A grassy mound just outside the nearby chapel purports to be the burial-place of the Cout. It is sited outside the graveyard on unconsecrated ground.

The Knight of Liddlesdale

I would guess that a version of this gruesome tale has made its way into modern fiction as part of the exploits of Ramsay in The Song of Ice and Fire series by George RR Martin.

Sir Alexander Ramsay is said to walk within the castle still, and his anguished cries sometimes reverberate off the moss covered walls.

A Queen’s Tryst

Later Bothwell would abduct and possibly rape, then marry and finally abandon Mary to her enemies resulting in her long imprisonment and eventual execution in England. However, fate also had an unpleasant end in store for Bothwell: he died insane in a filthy Danish dungeon.

WT Stead on Hermitage Castle

The noted Victorian Journalist WT Stead was very interested in the supernatural. He complied a number of ghost stories and eventually set up Julia’s Bureau to transcribe messages from beyond the grave. WT visited Hermitage Castle in his youth and recounted his experiences in his 1897 book ‘Real Ghost Stories’:

So I reasoned at the moment, and came back and stayed another hour in the castle, if only to convince myself that I was not afraid. But neither before nor after that alarm did any gust of wind howl round the battlements with anything approaching to the clamour which gave me such a fright. One thing amuses me in looking back at a letter which I wrote at the time, describing my alarm. I say, “Superstition, sneer you? It may be. I rejoiced that I was capable of superstition; I thought it was dried out of me by high pressure civilisation.” I am afraid that some of my critics will be inclined to remark that my capacities in that direction stand in need of a great deal of drying up.”[1]