Broughty Ferry Castle, Tayside
Also known as Broughty Castle this stronghold stands at the tip of a shallow point projecting into the Firth of Tay from the harbour of the attractive little town of Broughty Ferry, five miles east of Dundee.
King James II gave permission to build a small castle here. It took some time to put this into practice, and the castle was finally completed in about 1495. It was probably in the form of a tower, similar to the one you see today, surrounded by a walled enclosure.
The castle was built by the Gray family, who were to own and occupy it, except when displaced by the occasional invading army, until 1666.
The English arrived by sea at Broughty Castle on 20th September 1547, two weeks after they had defeated the Scottish Army at the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh, part of The Rough Wooing, an attempt by the English to force a future marriage of the then 5 year old Mary Quenn of Scots.
The castle was surrendered to them, and the English immediately set to work on improving its fairly weak defences. 3,000 Scots troops arrived in November 1547, but despite destroying parts of the tower they were unable to recapture the castle. The English strengthened their hold on the area over the following months at the same time as the Scots and the supporting French built up their forces in Dundee. On 20th February 1550 the French and Scots succeeded in capturing a subsidiary fort also held by the English, and the following day Broughty Castle surrendered to them.
The damage was repaired and the Grays moved back in for a relatively tranquil hundred years. But in 1651 the family were backers of the Royalist cause in the Civil War, which resulted in and the Parliamentary army attacking the castle at the end of August. that year.
The defenders fled without a fight. The Gray family sold Broughty Castle in 1666 and it slid slowly into obscurity and decay over the following centuries. It played no part in the turbulence of the 1700s, and was described as a ruin in 1787.
In the 1800s the castle passed through the hands of two different railway companies, one who wanted the land to build a rail ferry across the Tay, the other simply to build a branch line to Broughty Ferry harbour. But with the growing fears about a renewed French threat in the 1850s, Broughty Castle’s strategically important location came to the fore again.
It was purchased by the War Office and rebuilt in 1861, to a design that was intended to restore parts of the original castle. It remained in military use until 1932: and was again used by the military from 1939 to 1949.
In 1969 Broughty Castle opened as a museum operated by Dundee Council. The museum continues to be operated by the Council, while the structure of the castle itself is in the care of Historic Scotland.
