Findlater Castle
Encyclopedia
Moray Firth
The Moray Firth is a roughly triangular inlet of the North Sea, north and east of Inverness, which is in the Highland council area of north of Scotland...
on the coast of Banff and Buchan
Banff and Buchan
Banff and Buchan is a committee area of the Aberdeenshire Council, Scotland.It has a population of 35,742 . Fishing and agriculture are important industries, together with associated processing and service activity....
, Aberdeenshire
Aberdeenshire
Aberdeenshire is one of the 32 unitary council areas in Scotland and a lieutenancy area.The present day Aberdeenshire council area does not include the City of Aberdeen, now a separate council area, from which its name derives. Together, the modern council area and the city formed historic...
, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
. It lies about 15 km (9.3 mi) west of Banff, near the village of Sandend
Sandend
Sandend is a typical little fishing village near Banff and Portsoy, Scotland.In the late 19th and early 20th centuries it was an active village...
, between Cullen and Portsoy
Portsoy
Portsoy is a burgh in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, formerly in the county of Banffshire. The original name of the town was Pert Soaidh, which translates as 'The wooded place of the warriors...
. The cliffs here contain quartz
Quartz
Quartz is the second-most-abundant mineral in the Earth's continental crust, after feldspar. It is made up of a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall formula SiO2. There are many different varieties of quartz,...
; the name "Findlater" is derived not from Norse as earliar stated here but from the Scots Gaelic words fionn ("white") and leitir ("cliff or steep slope").
The first historical reference to the castle is from 1246. King Alexander III
Alexander III of Scotland
Alexander III was King of Scots from 1249 to his death.-Life:...
of Scotland repaired this castle in the 1260s in preparation for an invasion by King Haakon IV
Haakon IV of Norway
Haakon Haakonarson , also called Haakon the Old, was king of Norway from 1217 to 1263. Under his rule, medieval Norway reached its peak....
of Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
. The Vikings took and held the castle for some time. The castle remains that are still there are from the 14th-century rebuilding, when the castle was redesigned based on the Roslyn Castle
Roslin Castle
Roslin Castle is a partially ruined castle near the village of Roslin in Midlothian, Scotland. It is located around 9 miles south of Edinburgh, on the north bank of the North Esk, only a few hundred metres from the famous Rosslyn Chapel.There has been a castle on the site since the early 14th...
model.