The Craigmillar Bond hall
The great hall of the tower house, where by tradition Mary's nobles met in 1566 to plot her husband's removal, its great fireplace still in place.
Gunther Tschuch — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Photograph by Stuart Yeates, from en:Flickr — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Magnus Hagdorn from UK — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Magnus Hagdorn from UK — CC BY-SA 2.0
In November 1566 Mary, Queen of Scots lay ill in this castle for two and a half weeks, and while she recovered her nobles gathered here and signed what history calls the Craigmillar Bond: an agreement to be rid of her husband, Lord Darnley, by whatever means. Darnley was dead within three months, and the castle's owner, Sir Simon Preston, went from Mary's loyal host to her jailer a year later. That is the story that makes these stones talk, and you hear it in the place where it happened rather than in a museum across town. The castle sits about three miles south-east of the centre, roofless but one of the most complete medieval castles in Scotland: a late-14th-century tower house built by the Prestons, wrapped in a 15th-century curtain wall with round corner towers, then later ranges with a small chapel and a dovecot. The surprise is how much of it you can roam almost freely: up the spiral stair to the great hall, down to the prison, up again to the tower top where Arthur's Seat and Edinburgh Castle line up on the horizon. Even the fishpond in the grounds was dug in the shape of a letter P, for Preston. Here is the decision. Edinburgh Castle costs an adult around £26 and you share it with thousands in summer; Craigmillar costs £8.50 (£7.50 booked online) and you may well have a whole courtyard to yourselves. Children usually prefer it to the famous one because it is a real playground of passages, steps and window seats, but note that the stairs are narrow, uneven and dimly lit, so pushchairs stay outside the tower, and the grassy slope up to the courtyard turns slippery in rain. Check the official page before you go, as Historic Environment Scotland occasionally closes parts of its castles for masonry inspections. A taxi from the centre takes about fifteen minutes; otherwise Lothian buses such as the 30 and 33 stop at 'Craigmillar Castle Road', from where it is a fifteen-minute walk through the park. The castle car park is tiny and not to be relied on in the school holidays. It opens daily all year except 25-26 December and 1-2 January, until 17:00 from April to September and 16:00 in winter, no advance booking needed, and an hour to ninety minutes is plenty. Outlander fans will recognise it: Ardsmuir Prison was filmed here.
The great hall of the tower house, where by tradition Mary's nobles met in 1566 to plot her husband's removal, its great fireplace still in place.
From the top of the tower house Arthur's Seat, Edinburgh Castle and the whole city line up, usually with nobody in your way.
The remains of the fishpond in the grounds were dug as a letter P for the Preston family, best spotted from the top of the tower.
Craigmillar Castle Road, Edinburgh EH16 4SY
Yes, precisely because it is the opposite experience: Edinburgh Castle is a crowded historic showcase with timed tickets, while Craigmillar is a ruin you wander freely and climb with the children for roughly a third of the price. With only one day in Edinburgh, stick to the famous one; with two or more days, or children tired of queues, Craigmillar moves to the top of the list.
The grounds and courtyard yes, the tower no: the spiral stairs are narrow, uneven and dim, so the pushchair waits in the courtyard and small ones are carried. Children of six and up tend to enjoy it more than any other castle in the city; in the rain, watch the slippery grass slope up to the entrance.