Craigmillar Castle began as a tower house built for the Preston family, who acquired the surrounding lands in the late fourteenth century. The Prestons were prominent in Edinburgh’s civic and royal affairs, and their new residence stood only a few miles from the capital while commanding wide views across the Lothians. The tall central tower provided defensible accommodation, storage, and a public statement of rank. During the fifteenth century, a stone curtain wall with corner towers enclosed a courtyard, and additional ranges created a more comfortable noble household around the original keep.

Its closeness to Edinburgh drew Craigmillar into royal politics. James III used the castle during the turbulent struggles of his reign, and later Scottish monarchs visited or sought refuge there. English forces under the Earl of Hertford burned the complex in 1544 during the campaign known as the Rough Wooing, when Henry VIII attempted to force a marriage between the infant Mary, Queen of Scots, and his son Edward. The Prestons repaired the damage, and surviving architectural details show how the residence evolved after the attack rather than remaining a frozen medieval fortress.

Mary, Queen of Scots, is the castle’s most famous royal guest. She stayed at Craigmillar in 1563 and returned in late 1566 while ill and facing a political crisis after the murder of her secretary David Rizzio. Several leading nobles met there and discussed how to remove her estranged husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. The agreement traditionally called the “Craigmillar Bond” has not survived in an undisputed original, and Mary’s knowledge remains debated. Darnley was murdered at Kirk o’ Field near Edinburgh in February 1567, deepening the crisis that led to Mary’s deposition.

The Preston line sold Craigmillar in 1660 to Sir John Gilmour, a senior judge. The Gilmours built or remodeled the east range, adding larger windows, refined rooms, and a formal approach that suited seventeenth-century elite life. Their work turned the enclosed castle into a more modern country residence without erasing its defensive core. By the eighteenth century, however, the family preferred other homes, and Craigmillar was abandoned. Roofs and floors disappeared while the robust tower, courtyards, and walls remained unusually complete.

The ruin became a picturesque landmark on Edinburgh’s outskirts and entered state care in the twentieth century. Conservation has concentrated on stabilizing masonry and making the sequence of tower house, courtyards, gardens, and later residence legible. Because so many spaces survive, Craigmillar reveals the workings of a noble household as well as dramatic political events: kitchens, chambers, service routes, and gardens give context to royal visits and conspiracy. The castle’s history joins the ambitions of the Preston and Gilmour families to the national story of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the contested transformation of sixteenth-century Scotland.