New Slains Castle, Cruden Bay

New Slains Castle, Cruden Bay

New Slains Castle was first built around 1597, with additions and alterations made in 1664 and 1708. The castle was further extended and remodelled in the Tudor style in 1836-37 by John Smith. The castle is historically associated with Bram Stoker and is believed to have inspired his novel's depiction of Dracula's castle. In 1925 the roof was removed along with some architectural features including bay windows and the principal entrance stair. As of 2017, the castle stands as a ruin with most of the internal and external walls complete to wallhead. It sits at the top of cliffs on the North Sea coast of Aberdeenshire, overlooking the Bay of Cruden to the southwest, and the villages of Port Erroll and Cruden Bay approximately 1 kilometre to the west.

The castle is built predominantly of pink granite rubble, with exterior ashlar dressings of the same granite, added during the 1836-37 renovations. Internally, red brick, which in places is rendered, is used for the courtyard wall and two stair towers. The main southern section comprises four two-storey ranges set around a roughly square courtyard with a rectangular six-stage tower on the south corner. This section contained the principal rooms, including bedrooms, servant's quarters, bathrooms, a nursery, a dining room, a drawing room and a billiard room. Adjacent to the southern corner tower is a surviving vaulted wine cellar. The tower includes the oldest fabric of the building in its lower levels, with masonry walls 1.2 metres thick dating from the 1597 work. The structure at this time appears to have taken the form of a tower with conjoined ranges, perhaps forming a u-plan.

The courtyard has a concentric gallery believed to have been added in 1664 by Gilbert Hay, the 11th Earl of Erroll. The gallery is classical in style, with round arched openings, some blocked, set between pilasters rising two storeys in height. Above the arched openings at first floor level are square blind windows. The gallery walls retain some harling, which has been incised and moulded to mimic Doric pilasters and ashlar dressed masonry. In the centre of the courtyard is an octagonal two-storey tower, linked to the surrounding structure by brick-built additions to the southeast, southwest and northwest. The ground floor of the octagonal tower and additions served as storage and a larder, while the first floor provided corridors and a saloon. Brick-built stair towers stand in the east and west corners of the courtyard.

The southwest elevation includes the remains of the principal entrance, with a large archway at first floor level and the remains of the former porch protruding southwest from the building. Flanking three-storey round towers stand to the northwest and southeast of the doorway at each corner of the square plan. The remains of a large two-storey bay window can be seen in the centre of the southeast elevation, with a sculpted gable on its northeast end. The northeast elevation incorporates an elaborately sculpted Dutch gable in its southeast end, above the remains of another bay window.

The northern end of the complex is the former stable yard, roughly square in plan. The former entrance to the stable yard is located in the centre of the northwest wall, flanked by a pair of two-storey round towers. The building on this side of the yard formerly housed stables on either side of the entrance. The remains of gable-ended buildings that formed the northeast and southwest sides of the stable yard can still be traced. The northeast building formerly housed the blacksmith's and the carpenter's workshops, with additional stabling, while the southwest building contained the harness room, coach house and slaughter house. The southeast wall is crenellated and includes two round towers where the gables of adjoining buildings meet the wall, and a small six-sided boiler house is attached to the interior of the stable yard.

Linking the main house and the stable yard is an irregularly shaped former service section, housing the kitchen, pantries, scullery, brewhouse, and the coal and ash pits. Within this section are surviving kitchen fireplaces, a bread oven and evidence of alterations where a fireplace was divided by the addition of a later servant's entrance. A convex curved wall has been added to connect two older sections on the northeast part of this section, creating the space occupied by the coal pit, ash pit and a privy.

The seaward-facing exterior walls retain the majority of the added harling, which is visible in photographs of the castle taken around 1900. The surviving window margins are chamfered and many of the chimney stacks survive, including those with diamond-shaped chamfered tops. There are no interior fixtures or fittings remaining and there are no longer any floors, including ground flooring. Some evidence of cut-off timber joists remains where floors were once located.