Wednesday
Up very late. To Food Office. Lunch at Prestonfields again. Then to Craig Millar Castle – the most weird awful
and terrifying ruin. Felt it as soon as
I got inside the inner court, where the yew trees wave on the other side of the
gate.
The dreadful dungeons, Earl of
Marr etc. The Pole’s interesting
descriptions. This is the only place I
have ever felt in this way. Pole’s horror of deep dungeon.
Tea in basement room. Janet looking v. charming back from the theatre. Saw peacocks and peahens. Left these delightful people with great
reluctance.
Tonight to theatre with all the
Miss Biggams. Fine theatre, v.
full. Gielgud and Yvonne Cernand, who
had a terrible cold. Leslie Banks. First time I have ever seen really good
players.
Back in moonlight and mist. Found cycle had been badly bent while chained
to foot of stairs.
NB Edinburgh sweepers use old
birch brooms in the streets.
After making the above diary notes for this day, Rudsdale wrote a more detailed account of his visit to Craigmillar Castle as follows:
We walked through the fields
divided from Duddingston Loch by a railway yard, through the yard of a brewery,
up a steep hill through a new housing estate, filled with blocks of tenement
type, ugly, and rather badly built. This
is the very edge of Edinburgh ,
with the farms beginning, and little woods on the hill tops. At the top of the hill is a farm, with
extensive stone buildings and a cottage by the gate. There was a strong smell of manure.
Behind the farm stood Craigmillar Castle
As we went in a pigeon rose up with
a great flutter and sailed over the battlements out of sight. We were now in front of the grey keep, and on
either side were blocks of roofless buildings, with blank, blind windows, very
silent. N. led me round to the door of
the keep, above which is a panel showing what he said was the arms of the
Prestons. I believe the main motif is
supposed to be a unicorn’s head, but on this panel weather and age had changed
it to a horrible obscene shape of the most terrifying appearance.
We went in the doorway, into
intense blackness, N. talking away like a gramophone, but little could I
understand. I gathered though that the
building is generally dated as 15th century, but that in his opinion
is in part considerably earlier. I think
I rather incline to agree with him, as the construction of the keep certainly
looks to be very early work.
We had no torch, and the only
light to illuminate the dark cavernous chambers and narrow winding stairs was
provided by N’s petrol lighter. All this
time I had the most extraordinary sensations.
I felt that in every room Something was waiting, and that up each
stairway Something was following us closely.
Sometimes, through open windows I could hear the sound of men loading
muck in the farm yard, and the rattle of machinery in a quarry about half mile
away, but these sounds only seemed to emphasise the uncanny silence of the
Castle itself. N’s voice, with his weird
pronunciation, echoed in each chamber, the great hall, with its huge fireplace,
the little chamber off it, hung with loathsome looking goat skins, the Queen’s
room above.
Next he led me all over the
roofs, one of which is still largely covered with the original stone
tiles. We had (for me) a most unpleasant
walk along the battlements, skipping over large openings in the parapet walk
through which you could see the grass far below. The view was magnificent, but I was too busy
preventing myself from slipping through holes or being blown off altogether to
take very much notice of it. N. was
shouting cheerfully “Me! I do not mind this!
I am airborne commando in Polish Army!”
At last we got down to the ground
again, and went through endless passages, rooms, kitchens, bedrooms etc. all
dank and dark, till at last we went down to the lowest passage of all, with two
frightful vaults, one on either side.
The darkness was like sheets of stifling black velvet, and the silence
was intense. Even N. spoke more quietly
when he casually remarked “Now this
is the room where I always expect something to happen to me,” and then said “A
man’s body was found here some years ago.”
I did not bother to ask whose body or how long it had been there. I was concentrating on remembering where the
stairs were. It was down here the man
was said to have been murdered. At last
we got out and walked across the courtyard, between the two horrible yews with
their low sweeping clutching branches, and the door banged hollow in the
silence. I looked up to one of the
windows on the E. wing, and my flesh crept gently as there seemed to be a head
level with the sill. It was so lifelike
that I was about to mention it when it turned into a pigeon and flew out.
N. was not finished yet, but led
me through another court, on the W. side of the keep, and climbed down a rock
face on the S. side. From there we saw
the full height of the vast keep, towering up floor after floor, so grey, so
silent and sinister. N. pointed out an
arrowslot window, almost level with the top of the rock face, which he said led
into a room for which he could not account – apparently, according to his
measurements there is a discrepancy of 8 feet, which must be taken up by a
small room at this point, as all other chambers on that side are accessible and
accounted for. Somehow even the idea of
a secret room containing God knows what did not add very much to the general
discomfort and uncanniness of the place.
Back to Prestonfield for tea,
which we had in a big light room in the basement. Mentioned my impression of Craigmillar and
found that both Mrs D-C and Janet agreed.
Talk about ghosts at Prestonfields, where Lady Janet is sometimes seen
on the stairs, and on other occasions footsteps are heard going up a stairway
destroyed in the fire. But these stories
seemed mild and harmless in the firelight.
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