Qualla: Blackness Castle https://qualla.com/blackness-castle en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:16 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/q/blackness-castle-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Blackness Castle https://qualla.com/blackness-castle Blackness Castle: Introduction https://qualla.com/blackness-castle/ Photo credit Jonathan Oldenbuck, CC BY-SA 3.0. The locals call it the ship that never sailed. From a distance Blackness Castle looks exactly like a stone galleon run aground on the south shore of the Firth of Forth - narrow, long, with a high pointed bow facing north into the wind. The north tower is the stem. The south tower is the stern. The five-storey block in the middle is the main mast. It is one of Scotland's strangest castle silhouettes, and it has been guarding the Forth for nearly six centuries.

Read more: Blackness Castle on Qualla

Image: Jonathan Oldenbuck | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/q/blackness-castle-wp/gcvq-blackness-castle-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Blackness Castle: Crichton's Fort https://qualla.com/blackness-castle/ Photo credit Unoquha, CC BY-SA 4.0. Sir George Crichton built Blackness in the 1440s during a feud with the Black Douglases that had already cost him his tower at Barnton in Edinburgh. Crichton was Lord High Admiral of Scotland, Sheriff of Linlithgow, eventually Earl of Caithness - a man with reasons to fortify. He...

Read more: Blackness Castle on Qualla

Image: Unoquha | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/q/blackness-castle-wp/gcvq-blackness-castle-crichtons-fort.mp3 0:06 2 full Blackness Castle: Finnart's Gun-Castle https://qualla.com/blackness-castle/ Photo credit Stanley Howe, CC BY-SA 2.0. In the mid-1530s James Hamilton of Finnart took charge and turned Blackness into something Scotland had never quite seen. The illegitimate son of the Earl of Arran, Finnart had studied artillery fortification in Europe and brought back ideas that were genuinely advanced for their...

Read more: Blackness Castle on Qualla

Image: Stanley Howe | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/q/blackness-castle-wp/gcvq-blackness-castle-finnarts-gun-castle.mp3 0:06 3 full Blackness Castle: Cromwell and the End of the Idea https://qualla.com/blackness-castle/ Photo credit Stanley Howe, CC BY-SA 2.0. Finnart's gun-castle held for a century. State prisoners came and went - Cardinal Beaton, the 6th Earl of Angus, the Earl of Huntly - and Mary Queen of Scots's loyalists fought from these walls during the Marian civil war that followed her forced abdication in 1567. Then in 1650 ...

Read more: Blackness Castle on Qualla

Image: Stanley Howe | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/q/blackness-castle-wp/gcvq-blackness-castle-cromwell-and-the-end-of-the-idea.mp3 0:06 4 full Blackness Castle: The Set That Got Found https://qualla.com/blackness-castle/ Photo credit Otter, CC BY-SA 3.0. Blackness has always looked like a film set, and eventually filmmakers noticed. Franco Zeffirelli shot Hamlet here in 1990 with Mel Gibson. The 1996 film The Bruce used the walls. The 2008 science-fiction film Doomsday turned the courtyard into a post-apocalyptic prison. But it w...

Read more: Blackness Castle on Qualla

Image: Otter | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/q/blackness-castle-wp/gcvq-blackness-castle-the-set-that-got-found.mp3 0:06 5 full