The scant clifftop ruin of the Hays' old stronghold near Collieston, pulled down by James VI in 1594 and never rebuilt on this spot
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Substantial ruinsruined, but plenty survives above ground
Little is left of Old Slains Castle now: a fragment of wall on the cliff edge south of Collieston, easy to walk past. It was a stronghold of the Hay family, Earls of Erroll, until 1594, when James VI marched north and had it destroyed after the ninth earl joined a Catholic revolt against the crown. Rather than rebuild here, the family later put up a new Slains Castle a few miles up the coast at Cruden Bay, and that grander clifftop ruin, the one tied to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, is the Slains most people mean today. The reason to come to this one is the walk: out along the low red cliffs from Collieston, past the seabirds, towards the dunes and estuary of Forvie.
