# Falkland Palace

castle in Fife, Scotland, UK

Fife, United Kingdom

Palace · Fortification

## Story

• A late twelfth-century hunting lodge on a hill in Falkland was enlarged in the thirteenth century into a castle of the earls of Fife.
• James IV and James V rebuilt it as a French renaissance palace, and James V died there in December 1542.
• Mary, Queen of Scots kept Maundy and Easter courts here, and the Chapel Royal is dedicated to Thomas the Apostle.
• The real tennis court built for James V is still played, and it is called both the oldest in Britain and the oldest of its kind still in use.
• The third Marquess of Bute restored the ruin from 1887, and the hereditary keeper Ninian Stuart delegates the care to the National Trust for Scotland.

## Visiting

The palace is closed from 1 November until 28 February 2027, and it is open from 1 March to 31 October, daily, from 10:00 to 17:00, with last entry at 16:15. Guided tours run on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 10:00, and group visits must book in advance. The shop and garden are open from 1 March to 31 October, daily, from 09:30 to 17:00. From 1 November to 21 December the shop and garden are open from Thursday to Monday, from 10:00 to 17:00, and they are closed from 22 December to 13 January 2027.
From 14 January to 28 February the shop and garden are open from Thursday to Monday, from 10:00 to 17:00. The garden and shop are closed on Monday 16 November. Adult admission is £19.00, a family ticket is £44.00, a one-adult family ticket is £33.00, concession admission for ages 60 and over or a student with identification is £15.50, a child ticket is £10.00, and children under 5 are free. A Young Scot ticket is £1.00.
Admission is free for members. The same tickets with an optional donation are £20.90 for an adult, £48.40 for a family, £36.30 for a one-adult family, £17.05 for a concession, and £11.00 for a child. Online booking is not available, and tickets are sold on the day at reception in the palace or in the gift shop. The King's and Queen's Apartments are closed for essential work until further notice, and tickets are still sold for the rooms that remain open.
Visitors are allowed to enter the garden only through the shop. Dogs on a short lead are allowed to enter the garden, and only assistance dogs are allowed to enter the palace. Wheelchair users may not enter the palace, the tennis court or the gift shop, because the way in is a steep turnpike stair or steps. Mass is still held every Sunday morning in the Chapel Royal, and admission to that chapel is with a ticket.
Visitors are allowed to enter the garden where honeybees are kept in hives.

## History

Falkland Palace stands in the burgh of Falkland in Fife, on a slight hill under the Lomond Hills. A royal hunting lodge was here in the late twelfth century, and in the thirteenth century the earls of Fife made it a castle. The park was a managed forest closed by a pale, and in 1469 the keeper Bannatyne was docked wages for leaving that fence unrepaired.

In 1371 Isabella MacDuff, Countess of Fife, made Robert Stewart keeper of the castle and forest. As Duke of Albany he imprisoned his nephew David Stewart, Duke of Rothesay, at Falkland in 1402, and Rothesay died of neglect and starvation. James I took the place for the crown after the execution of Albany’s son Murdoch in 1424. Another account places the confiscation of the earlier castle in 1437.

James II granted Falkland to Mary of Guelders. Repairs in 1453 and works in 1461 and 1462 added a kitchen, stables, ponds, and a gallery of two chambers, with a door from her room into the garden. James IV and James V then turned the old lodgings into a renaissance palace between 1497 and 1541. Other dates given for that rebuilding are 1501 to 1540, and a start about 1530 with completion in 1541.

James V extended the buildings in a French manner from 1537 and died at Falkland in December 1542, after the defeat at Solway Moss. His body lay in the chapel for almost a month, and on 4 January 1543 it was ordered toward North Queensferry and Holyrood Abbey. He is also said to have been laid to rest at Falkland in 1542. Mary, Queen of Scots, his daughter, was born at Linlithgow on 8 December 1542 and became queen six days later.

The palace he left is an L of south and east ranges, entered by a gatehouse finished in 1539 to 1541. The north quarter, a mid-fifteenth-century great hall, was burnt in 1654, and only foundations remain. Another account places a fire during the occupation by the troops of Oliver Cromwell, after which the palace fell quickly into ruin. Nicholas Roy, also called Nicolas Roy, and Moses Martin made the courtyard façades in 1540 and 1541, with Corinthian buttresses and roundels.

Tree-ring dates from the south-range roof run from 1536 to 1538, and the roof was most likely raised in 1538 or 1539, in oak brought from Scandinavia. The chapel ceiling is of the same years and was redecorated for the visit of Charles I in 1633. The real tennis court was built for James V. One record places the court and stables between 1513 and 1538, the household accounts arrange the court in 1541, and it is called both the oldest court of its kind still in use and the oldest in Britain.

Mary, Queen of Scots kept Maundy at Falkland in March 1562, washing the feet of nineteen young women, and she was here for Easter in 1563 and 1564. Her return from France is placed both in August 1561 and in September 1561. Her mother, Mary of Guise, stayed often in the 1540s and 1550s, and the letters edited by Annie Cameron include Arran’s complaint that a great company could not be lodged in the town. The Chapel Royal is dedicated to Thomas the Apostle, with Mass every Sunday morning.

James VI spent the summer of 1583 in what an English diplomat called a little house. In July and August 1584 he welcomed Albert Fontenay, his mother’s envoy, and lent him a horse for the hunting. On 28 June 1592 Francis Stewart, Earl of Bothwell, failed to take the palace, and his men rode off with the king’s horses. James included Falkland in the morning gift for Anne of Denmark, and the same grant is also called part of the dowry he gave her in 1589.

On 12 May 1590 Danish ambassadors were given a handful of earth and stone as a sign that the lands were hers. In September 1613 the Venetian ambassador Antonio Foscarini came after hearing Anne speak of her love of Scotland. David Murray was allowed to build the Castlestead on the old castle site, and in 1699 Alexander Edward drew the palace for the keeper, the 2nd Marquess of Atholl. Charles II stayed in July 1650, and by 1685 the building was partly ruinous.

The third Marquess of Bute acquired the estates in 1887 and restored a ruin that had no windows or doors, with John Kinross and Robert Weir Schultz. Digging north of the standing ranges found part of a round tower more than fifty feet across, of about the thirteenth century, with a well sunk in the rock. In 1952 the hereditary keeper appointed the National Trust for Scotland deputy keeper. A further account places that care in 1954.

Ninian Stuart, born on 16 March 1957, is the hereditary keeper and delegates most of his duties to that trust. The palace was scheduled on 30 April 1920, a date also given as 29 April 1920, and the south range, gatehouse and cross house were listed in category A on 1 February 1972. In 2023 damp in the walls led to six seventeenth-century tapestries being taken down for storage. The king’s and queen’s apartments are closed for work on the building.

## Photographs

- [Falkland Palace — Sam Styles](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Falkland_Palace.jpg)
- [Falkland, Fife, Fife, Scotland — Immanuel Giel](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Big_Tent_Festival.jpg)
- [Central armorial tablet, Falkland Palace Gatehouse — Kim Traynor](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Central_armorial_tablet%2C_Falkland_Palace_Gatehouse.jpg)
- [Artistic Display of the Arms of Stuart of Bute, Falkland Palace, Fife Scotland — Kim Traynor](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/Armorial_tablet_of_the_Stewarts%2C_Falkland_Palace%2C_Fife_Scotland.jpg)
- [Photo by Michael Garlick — HARTLEPOOLMARINA2014](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Falkland_Fife_The_Palace_entrance.JPG)
- [BK10 EKA at Falkland Palace, Fife — Calum Cape from glenrothes, United Kingdom](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/Dean%27s_coach_BK10_ECK_at_Falkland_Palace%2C_Fife.jpg)
- [Falkland in Fife, Scotland - with East Lomond Hill in the background — Dorn Carran](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Falkland_-_Fife.JPG)
- [East wing of Falkland Palace — Mike Pennington](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/East_wing_of_Falkland_Palace_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1999076.jpg)
- [Bark of an ancient pear tree, Falkland Palace — Mike Pennington](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Bark_of_an_ancient_pear_tree%2C_Falkland_Palace_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1999104.jpg)
- [East wing of Falkland Palace — Mike Pennington](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/East_wing_of_Falkland_Palace_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1999167.jpg)

## Sources

- [Falkland Palace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkland_Palace) — Wikipedia
- [Mary, Queen of Scots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary,_Queen_of_Scots) — Wikipedia
- [Ninian Stuart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninian_Stuart) — Wikipedia
- [Thomas the Apostle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_the_Apostle) — Wikipedia
- [Aeneas James George Mackay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeneas_James_George_Mackay) — Wikipedia
- [Albert Fontenay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Fontenay) — Wikipedia
- [Alexander Edward](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Edward) — Wikipedia
- [Annie Cameron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Cameron) — Wikipedia
- [Antonio Foscarini](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Foscarini) — Wikipedia
- [Falkland Palace and Garden](https://www.nts.org.uk/visit/places/falkland-palace) — National Trust for Scotland
- [Planning your visit to Falkland Palace](https://www.nts.org.uk/visit/places/falkland-palace/planning-your-visit) — National Trust for Scotland
- [Conservation journeys at Falkland Palace](https://www.nts.org.uk/stories/conservation-journeys-at-falkland-palace) — National Trust for Scotland
- [Exploring the Structural Development of Falkland Palace](https://www.aocarchaeology.com/news/article/falkland-palace) — AOC Archaeology Group
- [South range of Falkland Palace, listed building](https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/apex/f?p=1505:300:::::VIEWTYPE,VIEWREF:designation,LB8798) — Historic Environment Scotland
- [Falkland Palace, scheduled monument](https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/apex/f?p=1505:300:::::VIEWTYPE,VIEWREF:designation,SM854) — Historic Environment Scotland
- [Falkland Palace, inventory of gardens](https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/apex/f?p=1505:300:::::VIEWTYPE,VIEWREF:designation,GDL00176) — Historic Environment Scotland
- [Falkland Palace, scheduled monument record](https://www.trove.scot/designation/SM854) — Trove
- [Falkland Palace, garden inventory record](https://www.trove.scot/designation/GDL00176) — Trove
- [Falkland Palace place record](https://www.trove.scot/place/29787) — Trove
- [Excavations and conservation at Falkland Palace](https://falklandpalacegarden.wordpress.com/) — Falkland Palace Garden
- [Falkland Palace building events](https://www.scottisharchitects.org.uk/apex/r/dsa/dsa/buildings?p9_id=206641) — Dictionary of Scottish Architects
- [Falkland Palace.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Falkland_Palace.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Big Tent Festival.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Big_Tent_Festival.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Central armorial tablet, Falkland Palace Gatehouse.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Central_armorial_tablet,_Falkland_Palace_Gatehouse.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Armorial tablet of the Stewarts, Falkland Palace, Fife Scotland.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Armorial_tablet_of_the_Stewarts,_Falkland_Palace,_Fife_Scotland.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Falkland Fife The Palace entrance.JPG](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Falkland_Fife_The_Palace_entrance.JPG) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Dean's coach BK10 ECK at Falkland Palace, Fife.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dean%27s_coach_BK10_ECK_at_Falkland_Palace,_Fife.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Falkland - Fife.JPG](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Falkland_-_Fife.JPG) — Wikimedia Commons
- [East wing of Falkland Palace - geograph.org.uk - 1999076.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:East_wing_of_Falkland_Palace_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1999076.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Bark of an ancient pear tree, Falkland Palace - geograph.org.uk - 1999104.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bark_of_an_ancient_pear_tree,_Falkland_Palace_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1999104.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [East wing of Falkland Palace - geograph.org.uk - 1999167.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:East_wing_of_Falkland_Palace_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1999167.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons

## Detailed history

Falkland Palace stands in the burgh of Falkland in Fife, on a slight hill that could be defended, with the Lomond Hills behind it. A royal hunting lodge was on the site in the late twelfth century. In the thirteenth century the lodge was enlarged into a castle of the earls of Fife, of Clan MacDuff. Meadows, fields, orchards and glades surrounded it, and Falkland Park was a managed forest closed by a pale, a ditch with a fence on top, kept so that game stayed inside for the royal household and its courtiers. A park keeper maintained the pale. In 1469 the keeper Bannatyne was docked wages for failing to keep it repaired. To the north, between the royal stable and the River Eden, a great oak wood merged into the parkland, and timber was sometimes cut there for royal ships of war. Another account places a steading here at least as old as the fifteenth century, and says the later palace grew from a castle that may have its roots in the twelfth or thirteenth century.

In 1371 Isabella MacDuff, Countess of Fife, acknowledged Robert Stewart, Earl of Menteith, a son of Robert II, as her heir, and made him keeper of the castle and forest of Falkland. A later account of the stained glass calls her Isabel, Countess of Fife, and says she died childless and passed the thirteenth-century castle to her brother-in-law, Robert Stuart. The same man, by then Duke of Albany, imprisoned his nephew and rival David Stewart, Duke of Rothesay, at Falkland in 1402. Rothesay was the eldest son of Robert III. He died in custody of neglect and starvation. One chronicle says the starving duke ate his own hands. A garden account of the same death spells him David Steward and his uncle Robert Stuart, and says the death was mysterious, possibly at the uncle’s hands. Albany was exonerated by the Parliament of Scotland, but suspicion remained and was carried against Rothesay’s younger brother, the future James I. Those events led to the fall of the Albany Stewarts. After James I ordered the execution of Albany’s son Murdoch in 1424, he took Falkland for the crown. A tree-ring study of the later palace states that construction began in the mid-fifteenth century, extending an earlier castle confiscated by the crown in 1437. The two dates both stand: possession after Murdoch’s execution in 1424, and confiscation in 1437.

Falkland became a retreat of the Stewart kings and their queens. They practised falconry and hawked in the forests. Red deer and fallow deer were kept in the park, some of them brought from Torwood Forest near Stirling.

James II granted Falkland to his queen, Mary of Guelders, and the place became a favourite residence. For the visits of 1453 the stables and other buildings in the close were repaired, a new kitchen was built, and linseed, cabbage seed, onion, leek and other seeds were bought for the garden. The first record of a garden here is also given as 1451. As a widow, Mary of Guelders set her stewards Henry Kinghorn and William Blair to supervise improvements in 1461 and 1462. The work included a stair from the queen’s chamber to the pleasance, new stables, a coal shed, repairs and an extension of the counting house, and smith-made andirons, or firedogs, for the queen’s bedchamber and the grate of the great hall. The royal carpenter was Andrew Lesouris. New structures included a gallery with two chambers, and that use of the French-derived word gallery is treated as the earliest in Britain. Two ponds were made in the hay yard. A new lawn was laid near the queen’s chamber, and a doorway was made so that she could reach the garden. Access of that kind was fashionable: Margaret of Anjou had it at Greenwich, Isabella of Portugal at Bruges, and Eleanor of Naples built new lodgings and a terrace garden at the Castello Estense in Ferrara. At Linlithgow a door leads to the garden and pele at the foot of what may have been the queen’s tower. Mary of Guelders is said to have had a walk made between two oak trees, called Queen’s Quarrels, a name that suggests archery, a quarrel being a crossbow bolt. Another walk was called the Gilderland. The hay meadow appears often in the royal accounts, as do onions, because the gardener’s pay was based on four barrels of onions. She may have meant Falkland to be her residence and spiritual retreat in widowhood. The court of the Exchequer met at Falkland every year to finish the accounts of her jointure lands. James III and Margaret of Denmark came in September 1473.

Between 1497 and 1541 James IV and James V turned the old castle and lodgings into a renaissance palace. A garden account narrows the present building to 1501–1540, and a survey of the ruins says construction began about 1530, was completed in 1541, and incorporated earlier work. James IV enjoyed imported oranges at Falkland in April 1497 and tipped the gardener and the workmen building the dyke around the park. Perkin Warbeck, his servants and his horses were here in 1496. In May 1501 James hired two stonemasons from Dundee, and an hourglass was bought for timekeeping. On 13 December 1501 the female minstrel Quhissilgibboun entertained him. In September 1504 he was entertained by fiddlers, lutenists and an African drummer known as the More taubronar. On 25 September 1502 a man from Pittenweem brought a live seal, and James gave him 14 shillings. The queen, Margaret Tudor, came in August 1509. A new chapel, perhaps on the site of the present south quarter, was roofed in 1512 by Alexander and John Slater, and masons worked on the garden wall. William Thome completed the walls of the great hall. Those payments sit in the exchequer rolls for 1508–1513 edited by Aeneas James George Mackay, who also noted the Wild Lady, paid £10 for her appearances at Falkland in 1513. James brought deer-nets from Kinneil House in November 1503. Andrew Matheson built a fold for deer in November 1505. A trap was made to slay foxes in the park. For a time in 1507 the horse of the French herald Montjoie, Gilbert Chauveau, was kept in the palace stables. In May 1508 James IV and John Methven stalked deer in the park with a firearm called a culverin. Wild boar imported from France were later kept inside a fence made by the Laird of Fernie. Dairy and beef cattle supported the household. In 1500 a new gardener, John Strathachin or Strachen, was to be paid four merks a year, with grazing for his horse and cows, and was to provide fruit, onions and herbs. The garden then had a courtyard and stables in the gatehouse, where James IV kept his great Belgian steed, and a fish pond that supplied the king.

The teenage James V was detained at Falkland by the Earl of Angus. Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie says he escaped to Stirling Castle, which his mother Margaret Tudor held. He had announced an early-morning deer hunt, then left in the middle of the night on horseback, dressed as a stable hand. Pitscottie names the local landowner Andrew Fernie as one of his sources, and Fernie probably supplied the story. Aeneas James George Mackay later edited Pitscottie’s chronicles, in 1899. Mackay had been born at 7 Albyn Place in Edinburgh on 3 November 1839, was admitted advocate in 1864, succeeded Cosmo Innes in 1874 as professor of constitutional law and history at the University of Edinburgh, and was Sheriff of Fife and Kinross from 1886 until failing health made him resign in 1901. He wrote a sketch of the history of Fife and Kinross in 1890 and a longer history of the two counties in 1896, and he died at his birthplace on 10 June 1911.

In March 1527, to mend the poor state of the garden and park, James V appointed William Barclay, Master of Rhynd, captain and keeper. The queen’s chamber was hung with tapestry for Margaret Tudor in September 1534. From 1537 James extended his father’s buildings in a French renaissance manner. In 1541 he arranged a royal tennis court and a bowling alley in the garden. The court was called a caichpule in Scots, and the game was jeu de paume in French. Mary was said to have scandalised the people of Scotland by wearing men’s breeches to play. The masons William Mason and Alexander Allardice, and others, built the court, and Callum the pargeoner, or lime plasterer, finished its walls. One inventory of the grounds dates the royal stables, tennis court and caichpule between 1513 and 1538, calls this the only real tennis court in Scotland and the oldest in Britain, and says John Kinross restored it in 1895 and that it was renovated in 1955. Another account calls it the world’s oldest tennis court still in use, and the visit to the palace calls it both one of Britain’s oldest original real tennis courts, built for James V, and the oldest surviving real tennis court in the world. It stands on lower ground in the gardens, a little beyond the medieval castle remains uncovered around 1900. Swallows use the roofed spectator gallery in spring and summer, and the court is home to the Falkland Palace Royal Tennis Club.

Amid the building, the court kept coming. In December 1538 and again in 1540, velvet and satin gowns were packed in a canvas bag and sent as gifts for the queen’s ladies. A new green satin gown and shirts were sent for Senat, the queen’s fool. In February 1539 one of Mary of Guise’s French courtiers, Marie Pieris, married Lord Seton by handfasting, and the French apothecary was at Falkland that day. James held a tournament on or around May Day 1539. In October 1539 Mary of Guise embroidered her husband’s shirts with gold thread, and her ladies’ luggage included embroidery tools called broder warklumys. In April 1540 James and Mary of Guise played cards. While they were here, servants washed the clothes of his infant daughter by Elizabeth Beaton, Lady Jean Stewart. Thomas Melville’s wife kept the family’s pets. In August Mary of Guise rode at Falkland in a new cloak of scarlet cloth edged with crimson velvet. Her tailor Nicholas du Moncel and her embroiderer Henri Le Moyne witnessed the wedding at Falkland of another French servant, Jean Landais. The goldsmith John Mosman made a gilt chalice for their short-lived son Prince James, born in 1540, and in July 1541 the chalice was sent to Falkland for the palace chapel. Wild boar from France arrived the same month. The Laird of Fernie built a new park dyke and a timber-fenced run. The boar came from Elbeuf near Rouen. Mary of Guise’s younger brother René II de Lorraine, Marquis d’Elbeuf, later hunted boar with dogs and toiles, the vautrait. An inventory of the goods of James V includes five sangler staves for boar hunting. A green velvet bed with velvet-covered posts was recorded in the wardrobe, packed in coffers and in travel bags called sowmes. Robert Murray, the plumber who maintained the fountain at Linlithgow, provided leadwork for a fountain at Falkland that has long vanished.

James V died at Falkland in December 1542, of an illness brought on by the shock and grief of the defeat at Solway Moss. Some say he also grieved that his wife had borne a daughter, the future Mary, Queen of Scots, rather than a son who lived. His body lay in the chapel for almost a month, and the chapel was draped in black. On 4 January 1543 messengers ordered the gentlemen of Fife to carry the body to North Queensferry on the way to Holyrood Abbey. A garden account says he was laid to rest at Falkland in 1542. Mary, Queen of Scots was born on 8 December 1542 at Linlithgow Palace, not at Falkland, and succeeded on 14 December, six days later, when she was the only surviving legitimate child of James V. A tale first written down by John Knox has the dying king say that the crown came with a lass and would go with a lass.

The palace that James left is an L of two wings, called the south and east quarters, entered through a gatehouse at the west end of the south quarter. A survey describes a quadrangle with buildings on the north, south and east, the west side closed by a wall against which a lodging once stood and was later removed. One account of the standing ranges calls it a three-sided quadrangle. The north quarter is placed in the mid-fifteenth century. It contained a great hall, evidently similar in plan to the hall at Stirling, was renovated from 1502, and was burnt in 1654. Only foundations remain. Another account says a fire during the later occupation by the troops of Oliver Cromwell partially destroyed the palace, which then fell quickly into ruin. The footprint of the northern hall was found by excavation, and the third Marquess of Bute laid it out in paving. Walls were later built on the foundations of the well tower and the great hall so that the lines could be read. Beyond them are the reconstructed footings of the older castle. A seventeenth-century house, the Castlestead or Nether Palace, once stood on that castle ground and is known from a plan and elevation drawn by Alexander Edward.

The east quarter, apart from its courtyard face, is ruined. It is dated about 1500 to 1512, of three storeys with a vaulted ground floor. A survey says the eastern range was a new work in 1516 and was virtually rebuilt in 1537. John Merlioun recast the courtyard façade from 1537, leaving the original rubble exposed, in six bays with Corinthian buttresses and roundels to match the south range. A circular stair tower, called a dovecot tower, stands at the north-east. The vaulted ground floor and the courtyard façade, less the dormer heads, survive; the rest is much ruined. The cross house, a rectangular tower at the centre of the east front, is also dated about 1500 to 1512, with a circular stair turret at the north-east. It was rebuilt from first-floor level upward in the 1890s, except for the stair turret, which had largely survived. The northern part of the east quarter had begun as a lodging of James IV. Its back galleries, looking over the garden, were already decayed in 1615.

The south quarter was originally of about 1501 to 1512: three storeys and an attic, the tall second floor containing the chapel, a vaulted ground floor, and a lean-to corridor on the north. It was completely refaced in ashlar in 1537 to 1541. Thomas French and James Black worked on it in 1538 and 1539. The outer south front is of six bays in a late gothic manner, with niched buttresses and statues by Peter Flemishman, also called Peter the Flemishman, who was paid for five statues in 1539. The second floor has square-headed windows of two lights, and the wallhead has a rich corbelled and crenellated parapet. The instruments of the passion are carved on the corbels. Nicholas Roy, also spelled Nicolas Roy, and Moses Martin made the courtyard façade in 1540 and 1541: Corinthian buttresses, roundels with busts, mullioned and transomed windows, and dormers with segmental pediments, in the manner of the Loire. The buttresses on the east are dated 1537 and those on the south, where the masonry is more sophisticated, 1539. A French mason sent by Antoinette of Bourbon, mother of Mary of Guise, started at Falkland on 20 April 1539. The courtyard fronts have been compared with the château of Villers-Cotterêts. Some writers gave part of the south quarter to James IV. The form of the gunloops, the continuous parapet, and the payments of 1539 are used to place the present outer appearance in the works of James V. Gunloops sit at basement level on the ashlar south front, with the small windows of private lodgings above them and the large paired windows of the chapel on the second level. It is not absolutely clear which part of the standing building is the chapel block of 1501 to 1512, for which William Turnbull, Andrew Matheson, William Thome and Andrew Wright were responsible. The same accounts place craftsmen under Sir James Hamilton of Finnart from 1537 to 1540, and under John Scryingeour of the Myres, also John Scrimgeour of Myres, from 1540 to 1542. Scrimgeour supervised building at the palace from 1532 to 1563. Nearby Myres Castle was the home of the royal macers and sergeants at arms who served Falkland from at least the sixteenth century.

The gatehouse, the fore-entry and tower with the captain’s chambers, was completed by John Brownhill and Henry Bawtie, also Henry Bawte, in 1539 to 1541, and one payment speaks of the complete ending of the fore entry and tower in 1541, with certain chimneys raised in the south quarter. It is of three storeys, with a crenellated parapet and a cap house. The pend is flanked on the south by round towers. A corridor on the north side was left unbuilt. The walls are ashlar except at the site of that corridor. Painted wooden armorial panels were added to the gatehouse in a repair of 1629, and further panel embellishments were added in the restoration of 1893 to 1896.

The chapel ceiling is of the time of James V and was made by the carpenter Richard Stewart. It was redecorated for the visit of Charles I in 1633. In 1625 James Murray, master of works, was ordered to repair the roof of the south quarter and to take special care that the great ceiling of the chapel be preserved as far as it possibly might. Tree-ring dating in early 2016 sampled the rafters of the south-range roof, a trussed and purlined structure of oak dressed with axe or adze, and the joists of the chapel ceiling. A cluster of felling dates runs from 1536 to 1538, the pattern of stockpiled timber. The rings match chronologies from Norway, Sweden and Denmark, so the wood was imported from Scandinavia. Allowing for the time of transport, the south-range roof was most likely raised in 1538 or 1539. The chapel joists could not be shown to have been felled in exactly the same years, but the ceiling most probably belongs to the same late-1530s phase. The masters’ accounts speak of a new chapel and vestry in the south range in 1537 to 1541, the span that covers those felling dates. In 1539 a Robert Mylne supplied 27 oak joists for the chapel, and one sampled joist has a date after which it cannot have been felled earlier than 1533, so those joists may be his. Oak joists in the palace at Stirling were felled in 1538 and 1539 and also came from Denmark or Sweden, and some of the strongest matches for the Falkland sequences are with the Stirling sequences, so the timber for both buildings may have arrived in the same cargoes. The accounts of the 1530s already note oak from Sweden and Denmark at Falkland. The tennis court, the cross house and the east turnpike were plastered and harled for James V by John Kelly and John Malcolm, alias Callum. Some interiors were plastered by a French specialist, Hector Beato.

Some sandstone was quarried locally. Limestone for mortar was found and burnt on the Lomond Hills. In 1540 a harder sandstone was quarried at Kingoodie near Dundee and shipped across the Tay to the haven of Lindores Abbey. Much of the timber, including Eastland boards, deals and rafters supplied by a Danish merchant called Kinnereis, was bought at St Andrews and Dundee, bound into rafts called floats, and towed to Newburgh, Lindores or Levenmouth. Other timber was bought at Leith and at Kirkcaldy.

Mary, Queen of Scots spent her childhood away from Falkland. She was moved to Stirling Castle in July 1543, betrothed in 1548 to Francis, Dauphin of France, and brought up in France during the Rough Wooing. She married Francis in 1558, was queen consort of France from his accession in 1559 until his death in December 1560, and returned to Scotland a widow. One account of her life says she returned in August 1561. The palace account says she returned from France in September 1561 and hosted diplomats at Falkland. Her mother, Mary of Guise, stayed often, especially in autumn, and was recorded in October 1546 and September 1549. Falkland and Stirling were official residences of the widowed queen dowager, and she kept wild boar in the park. Regent Arran came in October 1546. A letter, perhaps of 1548, mentions refurbishment of the stables, the wardrobes and the lodgings of one of her officials. In December 1549 she asked the Earl of Bothwell to escort her from Falkland to Stirling for a convention. In October 1552 Arran, ruling for the absent queen, doubted that Mary of Guise would come from Falkland to a Privy Council, because the palace and the town were too small: they would be a great company and could not easily be lodged in Falkland. Those letters survive in the correspondence of Mary of Guise edited by Annie Cameron, later Annie Dunlop, whose edition of that correspondence appeared in 1927. Annie Cameron was born in Glasgow on 10 May 1897, took a first in history at the University of Glasgow in 1919, and received her doctorate at Edinburgh on 17 July 1924 for a thesis on Bishop Kennedy of St Andrews. She later worked in the Vatican archives on Scottish supplications, served in the Scottish Record Office, lectured part-time in Scottish history at Edinburgh, was made OBE in 1942, and died in 1973. With Robert S. Rait she also published the negotiations between Elizabeth and James VI over the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. In June 1553 Arran’s daughter Anne Hamilton joined Mary of Guise at Falkland. Scrimgeour wrote to the queen dowager about repairs and lead roofs delayed by frost, and about the carts he needed for stone and for timber from the harbour at Levenmouth. In May 1559 he repaired the stables, hired Adam Symmers to mend the windows, and designed new ditches and fences for the garden.

Mary, Queen of Scots held her Maundy, Skyris Thurisday, at Falkland in March 1562, washing the feet of nineteen young women, the number of her age. John Balfour bought linen for the aprons and towels she gave them. She was here for Easter in April 1563 and April 1564. In May 1562 she fell from her horse near Falkland and had to defer a journey to meet Elizabeth I. At Easter 1562 James Hamilton, 3rd Earl of Arran, came with news of a conspiracy. He said James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, planned to abduct Mary and the Earl of Moray from the deer park. Both earls were imprisoned, and Arran was thought to be mentally ill. Her own reign ended in forced abdication on 24 July 1567 in favour of her son James VI, after the murder of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, her marriage to Bothwell, imprisonment in Lochleven Castle, and an unsuccessful attempt to recover the throne. She fled to England, was held for eighteen and a half years, and was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle on 8 February 1587. The early years of her personal rule had been marked by a proclamation accepting the religious settlement she found on her return, and by advisers including her half-brother James Stewart, Earl of Moray, and William Maitland of Lethington. John Knox questioned whether her subjects owed her obedience. The Chapel Royal at Falkland is dedicated to Thomas the Apostle, also called St Thomas, and the corbels of the chapel show the instruments of the passion. Thomas the Apostle, called Didymus, the twin, is one of the twelve in the Gospel of John. He said that he would not believe the resurrection until he saw the nail marks and put his hand into the wound, and when he was invited to do so he answered, My Lord and my God. Tradition places his preaching in India, with a first landing at or near Muziris, and in 1258 some of his relics were taken to Ortona. His feast is 3 July. The chapel at Falkland is the Catholic parish church of the burgh, open to the public and reserved for Catholic worship, with Mass every Sunday at 9 a.m. Mass is also held every Sunday morning.

James VI was treated as an adult ruler after October 1579. A cooper in Leith, William Todd, supplied barrels and brewing gear for his visits. In April 1582 he made John Killoch and Robert Schaw keepers of all his tennis courts and suppliers of balls and rackets. In June 1583 Schaw spent £100 refurbishing the court at Falkland. James spent the summer of 1583 here, and the English diplomat Robert Bowes called it a little house, unsuitable for a parliament. In 1584 the roofs were repaired, and James asked Agnes Leslie, Lady of Lochleven, and his tenants in Fife to send horses and to help carry slates, tiles, timber, sand and lime. In July and August 1584 he welcomed Albert Fontenay, a French envoy sent by his mother, and lent him a horse for the hunting. Albert Fontenay, also called Fontaine, was a chancellor or chamberlain to Mary, Queen of Scots, secretary of her council, and an administrator of her French estates and dowry lands. Mary called him the brother of her secretary, named Fontenoy, and he wrote to Claude Nau as my brother. Older writers sometimes confused him with Nau himself. He had visited Mary in England in October 1582, was aligned with Thomas Morgan and Charles Paget, and mistrusted James Beaton, the exiled Archbishop of Glasgow. He travelled to Scotland as her diplomat in July 1584 and wrote an account of the young James VI that has been cited ever since. Some of his letters were deciphered and published in 1974.

In July 1585 James stayed at Falkland during plague and ordered anyone with no business in the town or at court to keep away. His guests that summer included the English ambassador Edward Wotton and three Danish envoys who came to discuss Orkney, Shetland and the king’s marriage. In the gallery, Wotton spoke privately with James about a peace with England and a regular payment, or subsidy, of 20,000. In August 1586 James was here with the French diplomat Charles de Prunelé, Baron d’Esneval. In September he received books and hunting horses from Elizabeth, and news of the Babington Plot. The Master of Gray wrote from Falkland to the Scottish ambassador in London that James was content for the law to go forward, if his mother’s life was safe. In September 1587 a meeting at Falkland considered his marriage after his ambassadors reported that the elder Danish princess, Elizabeth, was promised to another. In August 1589 he entertained the French diplomat Jean Hotman, Marquis de Villers-St-Paul, and gave him a jewel and a ring with a diamond set in a star. Hotman promoted the Earl of Essex and may have argued that James should marry Catherine of Bourbon rather than a Danish princess.

James married the younger princess, Anne of Denmark. He included Falkland in the morning gift he gave his bride. The same grant is also called part of the dowry he gave Anne in 1589. On 12 May 1590 the Danish ambassadors rode from Wemyss Castle to Falkland to look at the palace and her lands in Fife. The keeper, James Beaton of Creich, welcomed them. The lawyer John Skene produced a charter of the queen’s lands, and, as a symbol of ownership, the Danish admiral Peder Munk was given a handful of earth and stone. They then rode to the Newhouse of Lochleven. In July 1591 another Danish ambassador, Paul Knibbe, brought a Danish gentlewoman, probably Margaret Vinstarr, to join the queen’s household. Around then an African servant of Anne, known only as the Moir, died and was buried at Falkland, probably in the kirkyard of Kilgour. He was a page of the equerry and wore orange velvet and Spanish taffeta. The burial cost £7 6s 8d.

On the morning of 28 June 1592 Francis Stewart, Earl of Bothwell, tried to capture the palace and the king and queen. With him were the Master of Gray, James Lumsden of Airdrie, the Laird of Niddrie, John Colville, Spott, and others, including men from Cumbria. James had been warned and had stayed at Falkland instead of going on to Perth. Bothwell’s plans had been told to Robert Bowes in Edinburgh, and Bowes had told Richard Cockburn, the Earl of Morton and the Master of Glamis that the king should look narrowly about him. Bothwell crossed the Forth at Queensferry on 27 June with 400 men. The Earl of Erroll and Colonel William Houston were at Falkland and were arrested on suspicion of being inside men. Bothwell’s men tried to batter the back gate and were driven off by gunshots before midnight on 27 June. The king withdrew to the gatehouse tower, and his guard shot at the attackers. James Melville says the defenders who favoured Bothwell loaded their guns with paper rather than bullets. Bothwell gave up the attack at seven in the morning and rode off with the king’s horses. James Sandilands chased them, captured nine men whose horses tired, saw five hanged in the Canongate of Edinburgh, and the others ransomed. One of John Colville’s servants was hanged, and a packet of coded letters and a cipher was found on him. The English border reiver Richie Graham of Brackenhill and his companions sacked the town of Falkland, taking horses, clothing and money. Bothwell was said to have urged his supporters to kill Sir John Carmichael, Sir George Home and Roger Aston. A month later Bothwell was said to be advancing again from Stirling Bridge, and some of his men were said to have landed in boats at a creek near Aberdour Castle. Harry Lindsay forewarned the king. The Earl of Argyll left his wedding party at Dalkeith Palace to help. Men were summoned from Edinburgh, Haddington and Linlithgow. Robert Bowes was then told that the alarm was deliberate and false, perhaps meant to draw the king from Falkland to a less secure place. Bothwell also tried to corner the king at Holyroodhouse.

The royal couple were back in 1593. Five tuns of wine were shipped to Levenmouth. James Beaton of Creich was keeper. Robert Arnot of Kilquhus, chamberlain of Fife, looked after the park and the meadow and took in local produce, including the onions. Andrew Fairny maintained the dykes and ditches. The tenants of Casch were paid for damage by escaped deer. David Murray, the king’s master stabler, kept the king’s mares and stags in the park. Guilliam looked after the hay, and George Strathauchin was gardener.

Elizabeth sent deer in 1586, in 1587, and again in 1591 from parks near Colchester. In May 1586 James went to Falkland to see deer taken out of carts and set loose. He asked the English ambassador Thomas Randolph for yeoman prickers, grooms of the leash, and horses. A yeoman pricker managed and guided the hunted deer. Randolph and the Scottish ambassador in London, Archibald Douglas, sent two hunting men, a footman, and bucks in August 1586. Randolph wrote that he had sent two skilful hunting men and one footman who could hoop, hollow and cry so that all the trees in Falkland would quake, and he asked that the king be merciful to the poor bucks but look well to himself. In November 1586 Archibald Douglas wrote to Francis Walsingham that a gift of bucks might help James in his grief at the coming loss of his mother. In February 1587 the French diplomat Courcelles reported James as saying that if Elizabeth meddled with his mother’s life he would return more than the dogs and deer she had sent. In July 1587 the poet and diplomat Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas spent his time at Falkland hunting deer and hare with the king. In 1588 James paid £54 Scots to Archibald Arnot, a burgess of Falkland, for looking after his huntsmen. In May 1592 Robert Bowes went with the English-born huntsman Cuthbert Rayne to Barnard Castle, Raby Castle and Brancepeth Castle, caught only six deer, and shipped them from Sunderland to Kirkcaldy. In April 1597 the carpenter and master wright James Murray took 28 English deer from Leith to Falkland. Robin the Hunter kept hounds for James here, and Anne sent deer hounds to her brother, Christian IV of Denmark.

Another Danish commission, including Steen Bille and Niels Krag, came in 1593, and James Beaton of Creich then gave Anne more rights over the lands and buildings. She came to stay on 12 July 1594, before the baptism of Prince Henry at Stirling. It was said she left Edinburgh because Holyrood was not magnificent enough for Steen Bille and Christian Barnekow. Annie Cameron’s calendar of the state papers for 1593 to 1595 includes that summer. James had arranged for Prince Henry to live at Stirling with the Earl of Mar, which the queen would not accept. In August 1595 he persuaded Anne, reluctant to leave Edinburgh, to come to Falkland and meet Mar. The royal chaplain Patrick Galloway preached on Adam and Eve and the duties of husband and wife, and it was thought she gave his advice good ear. Another minister, David Lindsay, had a long conference with her. James and Anne were then said to be lovingly together at Falkland. Margaret Vinstarr had returned from the queen’s mother, Sophie of Mecklenburg-Güstrow, whose message was that Anne ought to obey her husband in all things.

On 12 August 1597 James and the Privy Council met at Falkland during the Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1597 and issued a proclamation revoking some commissions of justiciary against suspected witches. The proclamation followed the disputed commissions that rested on Margaret Aitken, who claimed she could detect a witch by looking at the eyes. It restored to the king duties that had been delegated as general commissions in 1591, when local landowners could execute accused people without challenge from the centre. The hope was to reduce the killing of innocent people. The order was narrow: it discredited only commissions presided over by one or two men alone, and it repeated James’s determination to continue the hunt. In the trials of the early seventeenth century the Falkland proclamation did help to bring in a more restricted practice, and a greater concern for the evidence needed to condemn.

When Anne visited in September 1598 her bedchamber was hung with tapestry brought from Holyroodhouse, and Rhenish wine was brought for her. In July 1599 the French ambassador Philippe de Béthune, brother of the Duke of Sully, came. The English diplomat Sir William Bowes was reluctant to come, lest James show more favour to the Frenchman. Béthune fell ill, needed a surgeon and a physician to bleed him, and was rumoured to have been poisoned. He recovered and went with the king to Inchmurrin and Hamilton Palace, after James wrote to the Laird of Wemyss for the loan of his best hackney and saddle. In July 1600 herons nested in the park, and James, hoping they would increase and multiply, forbade anyone to kill herons in the neighbouring lands. In August a French acrobat danced on a tightrope in the courtyard for the king and queen. James Melville says the display was meant to soften the queen’s feelings after the Gowrie House affair. In May 1602 James played cards with the English diplomat George Nicholson. For a time Prince Henry, usually kept at Stirling, was allowed to visit and comfort his mother at Falkland after the death of Duke Robert. In September 1602 Anne and the Master of Gray entertained Anne de Gondi, wife of the French ambassador the Baron de Tour, while the baron went on progress with the king. Lord Henry Howard noted that the time Gray spent with the queen affected the conceit of his writing. On 21 June 1597 James had met Sir Robert Bowes and Sir William Bowes in the garden at eight o’clock and listened to them on border affairs. In August 1602 he received the Baron de Tour in the garden, talked for three quarters of an hour, and was made to laugh. A few days later they hunted in the park.

David Murray became keeper of the garden, the park and the Lomond Hills, and was allowed to build a house on the site of the old castle, called the Castlestead or Nether Palace. One account names David, Viscount Murray of Stormont, as the hereditary keeper who built a house on the castle site early in the seventeenth century, long since demolished. Lord Walden stayed a night in August 1613. The house passed to the next keeper of the park, John Murray, 1st Earl of Annandale. The palace was sometimes used as a prison. In November 1608 James instructed David Murray to keep James Elphinstone, 1st Lord Balmerino, in the tower for treasonable correspondence with the Pope. Balmerino was released in October 1609. In September 1613 the Venetian ambassador Antonio Foscarini came to Falkland after hearing Anne speak of her love of Scotland. Antonio Foscarini, born about 1570 and the third son of Nicolò di Alvise of the San Polo branch and of Maria Barbarigo, was a Venetian nobleman, envoy to the court of Henry IV of France, ambassador to France from 1608 and to England from 1611. On 22 April 1622 the Council of Ten sentenced him to death for high treason and he was executed. Ten months later the same council rehabilitated him, revoked the verdict, and told the European courts. The accusation sat inside factional fighting, disputes between church and state, and the religious hostilities of the early Thirty Years’ War. Delays in taking up his embassies formed part of the charges against him. In June 1611 he wrote that Anne had received from her brother Christian IV a jewel with the initials C4 set in diamonds, and in July he had a private audience with her in a gallery at Hampton Court.

After the Union of the Crowns in 1603, Andrew Murray of Balvaird watched the palace. In 1615 he advised John Murray of the bedchamber that the king should send a commission for repairs, or the building would fall to the ground. The back galleries were already decayed. The architect James Murray repaired the palace for the king’s visit in 1617, and was ordered in 1616 to repair the flat roof of the king and queen’s galleries and the roof of the east lodging. Some courtiers stayed in the house of Nicol Moncrieff, which still stands opposite the palace gate. At the welcome on 19 May, David Wedderburn offered a Latin poem in which the king, after a day of hunting, was asked to contemplate Scotland’s past, victories over Romans and Vikings, the wars of independence, and the union of the kingdoms. The palace was repaired again in 1629. Roofing slates were shipped from Dundee to Newburgh. The glazier David Masterton painted the iron window grills, or yetts, with red lead. Valentine Jenkin painted a new set of wooden armorial panels for the gatehouse.

Charles I and Charles II both visited. Charles I’s visit of 1633 is the occasion of the painted chapel ceiling. Accounts survive for Charles II’s stay in July 1650, when proclamations had to be issued to bring down the inflated prices of lodgings and horse-hire in the village. His food was seasoned with saffron, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and ginger. Every tart for the king’s table used a pound of sugar, and tarts for lesser courtiers used half a pound. On 18 July the mining entrepreneur James Hope of Hopetoun met the king’s physician, Dr Fraser, and various officials. In the privy chamber Charles thanked him for a previous gift of a piece of Scottish gold, and they later talked of mining and technology. The north quarter was burnt in 1654. By 1685 the palace was partly ruinous. It was extensively restored in the nineteenth century.

In 1699 Alexander Edward made a drawing of the palace for its keeper, the 2nd Marquess of Atholl, and he surveyed the Castlestead or Nether Palace. Alexander Edward was born on 10 June 1651, the eldest son of Robert Edward, minister at Murroes in Angus. He graduated from St Andrews in 1670, was ordained in 1679, and was minister of Kemback in Fife from 1681 until he was deprived in 1689 as a non-juror, though he was still minister in 1694 after a mob attacked his manse in 1691. He was a pallbearer at the funeral of Archbishop Sharp. He worked as a draughtsman for Sir William Bruce, drew Kinross House, and from 1696 to 1708 rebuilt Brechin Castle for the Earl of Panmure. In 1701 and 1702 Jacobite-leaning nobles sent him to England, Paris and the Low Countries to collect current architecture, and he also carried coded letters from the Duke of Hamilton to James Stuart at Saint-Germain. He died on 16 November 1708.

The keepership in the sixteenth century lay with the Beatons, or Bethunes, of Creich, and passed by marriage to the Murrays. From the Murrays it passed to the Earl of Atholl during the Commonwealth, and then to the Dukes of Atholl. Skene of Pitlour acquired it in 1787, and it passed by marriage to the Moncrieffs of Myres. In 1820 General George Moncrieff disposed of it to Professor John Bruce, whose niece brought it to O. Tyndall Bruce. He repaired the neglected south quarter and gatehouse in 1840. The same campaign is described as a considerable alteration of about 1840, presumably under the supervision of William Burn, for O. Tyndall Bruce. Burn’s alterations were later largely removed. The third Marquess of Bute, also called the third Marquis, and John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, acquired the estates from the Bruces in 1887. One account says he purchased the palace and at once began to dig. Another says that, as keeper, he did not own the objects he excavated, which is why no list of finds was made. The keepership passed to Lord Ninian Crichton Stuart in 1900 and to Major Michael Crichton Stuart in 1915. A palace history spells the major Michael Crichton Stewart and says that in 1952 he appointed the National Trust for Scotland to care for the palace, so that the trust became deputy keeper. A garden account places that care in 1954. The deputy keepership is also dated to 1952.

John, third Marquess of Bute, began a restoration that one account calls twenty years of work, using the architects John Kinross and Robert Weir Schultz. When he began, the palace was a ruin without windows or doors. Kinross started excavation, restoration, consolidation and redecoration in 1887. William Frame measured the palace in 1889 and 1890 with restoration in view. The cross house and the wall round the garden and stables were restored about 1890, and the main phase under Kinross is placed from 1893, chiefly 1893 to 1896. His restoration of the garden walls is placed in the 1890s. Schultz worked on the chapel altar, retable, footpace and credence in 1904, and the tapestries were hung in 1906. A letter B appears on the guttering, and portraits of Bute’s children are carved on a cupboard door in the keeper’s dressing room. Thomas Bonnar painted elaborate decoration in 1895 and 1896, based on the paintings of David Scott, and interior fittings came from Bute’s workshops at Cardiff. The royal pew was reconstructed on the model of the pew at Scone, using fragments of the original wooden screen at Falkland. In 1956 there were alterations to a first-floor room of the cross house and decoration of the King James V room. W. Schomberg Scott and David McClure are named for the decoration of that room. Schomberg Scott also recreated the king’s and queen’s bedchambers in the cross house, and in 1965 he built a visitor centre. A sundial in the garden is his as well. The bridge between the palace and the House of Falkland dates from 1890.

Bute’s digging, from 1887 until about 1892, looked for the twelfth- and thirteenth-century castle, and in particular for the well tower in which Rothesay had been held. The ruins lie below the oak lawn. John Kinross drew plans of the excavation, about five metres by two, colour-coded by the age of the masonry. Bute wrote in 1892 that the diggers, working in the garden north of the standing palace, found the original enclosing wall and the north-east angle and part of a round tower more than fifty feet in diameter, retaining a little of an ornamental string course of about the thirteenth century, with the well sunk in the rock at its centre. He compared the plan with Bothwell Castle and wrote that the tower, with a high pointed roof, must have been the main feature of the early group and a mark in the landscape for many miles around. The patio and floor now seen at the well tower are his restoration, not the medieval floor level, and he used red sandstone so that later people could tell new work from old. The rest of the castle found in the dig was backfilled with rubble from the palace restoration and lies under the grass and trees of the oak lawn. He is said to have undertaken about sixty restorations and excavations in his life. In 1994 the two castle towers were cleared of vegetation after roots had damaged them. The keep, or well tower, was found to have been dismantled and entirely restored by Bute in the 1890s. A well head, perhaps of seventeenth- or eighteenth-century design, had been introduced, and he had reused stone from nearby medieval buildings to make a level surface, which was then to be consolidated for visitors. A second, smaller tower was due to be investigated in 1995. In 1995 four trenches at first-floor level in the east range, cut to date the deposits over the vaulted cellars, found only concrete, bricks, felt, bitumen and ashy waste, laid either in Bute’s late-nineteenth-century renovations or when concrete floors were put down in the 1930s and the 1960s. In 1996 a watch on drainage trenches in and outside the cellars beyond the east range found two lengths of the original sixteenth-century drain at the north end, and a third drain just north of the cross house that was a late-nineteenth-century rebuild. The load-bearing walls of the east range, the cellars and the cross house sit on bedrock. Removal of the concrete over the hall floor was watched at the same time. A further watch on new drains along the courtyard side of the south range found a stone-lined channel running 35 metres, 0.3 metres wide, and from 0.25 metres deep near the east range to 0.45 metres deep at the west end, together with a U-shaped open drain above it, both thought to be of the nineteenth century. Two cut-down Pictish symbol stones found on Westfield Farm are exhibited in the palace museum. They were not found in these palace trenches.

The stained glass is heraldic and of the late nineteenth century, commissioned by Bute. The windows of the chapel and the tapestry gallery were commissioned in 1893 and installed in 1894. Those of the office and the private apartments were installed in 1897. Most pair a husband and a wife: James IV with Margaret Tudor, James V with his second wife Mary of Lorraine. Magdalene of France, his first wife, is alone in the ante-chapel, and Francis II, the first husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, is alone in the vestry. The stairwell beyond the tapestry gallery includes the arms of David, Duke of Rothesay, and of Isabel, Countess of Fife. Horatio Walter Lonsdale drew the cartoons. The scheme follows the Lindsay Armorial of 1542, and the plain glass is diamond-shaped quarry glass, copying seventeenth-century painted windows on the chapel wall. In the conservation year of 2015, panels that had bulged as the lead stretched were taken to Glasgow, cracks were to be mended with resin, and the chapel glass was to be repaired in place. The same year the sandstone roundels of the south range, part of the work finished in 1541 and associated with Moses Martin and Nicolas Roy, were consolidated. They had been built face-bedded, so the surface peeled, and four of the heads had already lost their faces entirely. From 7 to 10 April their condition was recorded and old filler was removed. They were sprayed with ethyl silicate, kept covered from 13 to 29 April, uncovered on 30 April, and then grouted with a lime-based mix until 15 May, with ceramic supports and thin stainless-steel rods where the outer wreaths had been lost. A magnified view showed insect damage in the sandstone. The painted ceilings were restored in the same campaign. The roundels include one identified as Margaret Tudor. Five female portraits among them are remarked on as rare.

The ornamental kitchen garden gained a pergola and decorative vases under Bute. A glasshouse was built in 1890 by Mackenzie and Moncur of Edinburgh, mainly for flowers and exotic plants, and there is evidence of a second glasshouse nearby. The orchard and palace gardens were linked to the House of Falkland by a private walk and new bridges. The ground around the curling pond, north-east of the orchard, was planted with trees, shrubs and flower plots. A yew hedge encloses the pond garden. The lime avenue north of the gatehouse appears between the surveys of 1894 and 1912–13. The palace itself stands on about three hectares of a sandstone ridge. Percy Cane redesigned the gardens in the 1940s, and the same redesign is also placed in 1947–1952. He had designed the palace grounds at Addis Ababa, was born and educated in Essex, founded the quarterly Garden Design in 1930, and worked in an Arts and Crafts manner with curving borders. The garden is rated outstanding for its design, its history and its architecture, and high for its plants. Traces of early terraces, probably of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, remain. The castle fragments on the second terrace are listed in category B, as are the walls round the gardens and stables, which are of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and were restored by Kinross in the 1890s. The stables and tennis court are listed in category A.

The head gardener Sonia Ferrás Mañá has been restoring Cane’s planting. The meadow has been cut only once a year for four years, and more than 10,000 wild flowers have been planted, with a similar number of spring bulbs. The orchard has about forty kinds of fly, some rare and some not found elsewhere in Scotland, and pipistrelle and soprano pipistrelle bats hunt there. Red squirrels have been seen in the forest, and a shelter in the orchard is meant for invertebrates and small animals. Hawthorn, oak and willow have been planted. The Maspie Burn, between garden and orchard, holds trout. Bats also live in the palace cellars, and the walls have been repointed in lime mortar so that they can breathe. A physic garden of fragrant herbs now sits in the foundations of the former great hall. There is a living willow labyrinth, a giant outdoor chessboard, and an apothecary, called the newest room, whose hands-on presentation follows the room’s use for filming.

The palace was added to the schedule of monuments on 30 April 1920, as a secular castle and palace. Another record of the same monument gives 29 April 1920. The schedule was amended on 27 June 2017, and another record gives 26 June 2017. The south range, the adjoining gatehouse and the cross house were listed in category A on 1 February 1972, and that listing was amended on 27 June 2017. The designed landscape was added to the inventory of gardens on 1 July 1987, and another record of that inventory gives 30 June 1987. An older survey, visited on 21 March 1967, found the east range then being extensively restored.

In 2023 Ashley Turner, a regional building surveyor, recommended an investigation after high winds and heavy rain had driven moisture into the fabric. Salts on internal walls and a sustained rise in humidity threatened the collections. The wall between the Chapel Royal and the tapestry gallery was opened to study. Karen Dundas examined the painted scheme for old and new water entry. On the other side, six seventeenth-century tapestries, at the palace since 1906 and hung on velcro from batons, had to come down. The largest measures 7.5 by 3.26 metres. They were already weak with age and could not take the extra weight of damp. After the 2024 season closed, objects on loan were removed, dehumidifiers were set to condition the wool and silk, and Sophie Younger devised a way to roll each tapestry vertically on a trolley with a tube four metres long. They were rolled with a barrier of aluminium foil and acid-free tissue, checked for pests, and wrapped in inert fabric for storage until they can be hung again. One smaller tapestry was to be shown in a case at Hill of Tarvit through the 2025 season. Further building work was planned through 2025, and a February 2025 account said the palace would reopen on 1 March. The king’s and queen’s apartments are at present closed for essential work on the building, though re-created king’s and queen’s rooms are still described for visitors.

Today the hereditary keeper is Ninian Stuart, born Ninian Crichton Stuart on 16 March 1957. He is the grandson of Lieutenant-Colonel Lord Ninian Edward Crichton-Stuart, who was born on 15 May 1883 and died on 2 October 1915, the second son of John Crichton-Stuart, third Marquess of Bute. Ninian Stuart lives in Falkland, has been stewardship director of the Falkland Heritage Trust, and co-founded the Falkland Centre for Stewardship, which ran the Big Tent festival each July. He is a cousin of John Crichton-Stuart, seventh Marquess of Bute, born 26 April 1958 and died 22 March 2021, who raced as Johnny Dumfries and won the 1988 24 Hours of Le Mans. Ninian Stuart delegates most of his duties at the palace to the National Trust for Scotland, which remains deputy keeper.

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