Qualla: Linlithgow Palace

Linlithgow Palace: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. She was six days old when the English ambassador came to see her. Ralph Sadler had ridden from Edinburgh in March 1543 to inspect the infant queen, and Mary of Guise unwrapped her newborn daughter from the swaddling so he could look. "As goodly a child I have seen," Sadler wrote afterward, "and like to live." The child was Mary, Queen of Scots, born at Linlithgow Palace the previous December. Her father James V had died six days after her birth, leaving the throne to a baby and the kingdom to a regency that would consume the next two decades.

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Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Linlithgow Palace: The Peel and the Palace

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 2.0 de. A royal manor stood here from the 12th century, but the fortified site Edward I built in 1301 - the Peel, a timber palisade with an outer fosse - was the real beginning. Sixty men and 140 women dug the ditches in September 1302; the men were paid twopence a day, the women a penny...

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Image: CC BY-SA 2.0 de

Linlithgow Palace: The Stewart Court

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mike Pennington, CC BY-SA 2.0. James IV continued the work and brought Margaret Tudor here as his bride in 1503 - the palace became her favourite Scottish home. Their son, the future James V, was born at Linlithgow in April 1512. After Flodden killed his father in 1513, the infant king was kept elsewhere, but ...

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Image: Mike Pennington | CC BY-SA 2.0

Linlithgow Palace: Collapse, Wine, Fire

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit J. M. W. Turner, Public domain. After the Union of the Crowns in 1603 the court moved to London, and Linlithgow was used only occasionally. The North Range, ruinous since 1599, finally collapsed at four in the morning on 6 September 1607. King James VI had it rebuilt between 1618 and 1622 with the carving desig...

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Image: J. M. W. Turner | Public domain

Linlithgow Palace: What Remains

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AlistairMcMillan, CC BY-SA 3.0. Today the palace is a roofless shell maintained by Historic Environment Scotland - the apartments are largely intact in their walls if not their interiors, and the elaborately carved hexagonal fountain still stands in the courtyard, said to be one of the finest of its kind in Bri...

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Image: AlistairMcMillan | CC BY-SA 3.0