Secret Stories
From Culzean Castle’s Caves
Maura McRobbie
There’s no doubt that the secrecy associated with the caves at Culzean Castle has fascinated people for centuries. The site where the present-day castle sits was once known as ‘cove’, the ancient word for cave, and the red sandstone rock formation, together with millennia of sea erosion, has created a natural deep network of hollows, perfect for hiding, storage or shelter.
Various adaptations have been made to the caverns by successive generations. For example: small square look-out windows, rectangular doorways, internal archways, iron gates, not to mention a stairway opening into the castle kitchen above. In one cave, situated close to the shore, there is a freshwater spring, a toilet area, and evidence of habitation, thought to be either for guards of the household who historically used the caves as storage, or latterly by lookouts for smugglers.
From the 15th to the early 18th centuries, the Culzean caves were used legitimately as storage for barrels of brandy and wine, crates of tea, coffee, and tobacco as well as silk and satin from continental Europe, the Far East and the American colonies.
Ayrshire was in a prime position to land goods directly from the Isle of Man, and the Ayrshire seamen were known for their skill and prowess, rowing their fast, deep wooden boats at speed out to the tall ships where they collected supplies. However, following the Jacobite defeat at Culloden in 1746, super taxes were imposed on these goods by King George III at Westminster, thus resulting in the smuggling trade, its peak being the years between the 1750s to the 1780s.
I first visited the caves as a young teacher in the 1980s with a group of children of Pakistani origin who had recently settled in inner city Glasgow. We spent a residential week in a lodge in the grounds of Culzean, exploring the shoreline, following the myriads of trails under the canopied trees with the dappled sunlight overhead. The youngsters adored their first taste of the Scottish seaside and in this special, sheltered environment, we collected stones from the shore and hand-painted them back at the lodge.
Some were painted with Asian-style henna designs, others were inspired by lime green ferns and tiny scarlet campions we had collected on our walks. We pressed lots of wildflowers, each identified and labelled. Some of the children were fascinated by the birds, others by the trees, but most of them adored skimming stones on the shoreline. In the evenings we shared stories of how the Ayrshire smugglers had used the caves so the lords and ladies, as well as the servants and their families, could drink tea and coffee without paying exorbitant taxes imposed by the unpopular Hanoverian government.
My personal knowledge of the Ayrshire coast and the role the caves played in the 18th century had come from my childhood days spent on the island of Cumbrae. There, the evidence is still intact. The locals refer to bays on the west of the island as Wine Bay, Brandy Bay and China Bay. There is a dungeon/storeroom built into the rocks below a house next to the harbour where the main hotel, for two centuries known as the Royal George, stood. At the top of the island, the secret sandy paths meander down to the bays with uninterrupted views of the picturesque clifftops of Wee Cumbrae, the golden sands of Kilchattan Bay on the island of Bute, and the majestic mountains of Arran in the distance. It is as breathtaking today as it would have been more than two centuries ago when smuggling was at its peak.
The Ayrshire men were adept rowers and their sturdy boats, fitted with hidden compartments below deck and on the sides, were sleek and fast and able to outwit the official tax collectors’ ships. They also knew the tides, the coastline and each other. They had an advantage in their formidable network of contacts on each island, cove and bay of the Ayrshire coast. Finally, in exasperation, King George commissioned a ‘state of the art’ ship, and that’s when the Royal George Revenue Cutter dropped anchor at the main bay in Millport, the gateway of the River Clyde. The local people had never seen such a ‘bling’ ship, and in the 20 years that followed, under the command of Captain Crawford, the Revenue Cutter, intercepted so many smuggling boats that it raised the equivalent of £2,250,000 for the treasury in London, as reported in The Caledonian Mercury of 1776. Garrison House in Millport was built with some of the revenue to house the King’s officers, and the street names in Millport were named after Captain Crawford and his second mate, Ritchie, in recognition of their contribution to stamping out the illegal trade on goods. There is a painting of the magnificent Royal George Revenue Cutter on display in Millport Library in the Garrison today.
Forty years after my residential trip to Culzean, I reconnected with the caves of Culzean while researching my novel, Smugglers’ Midnight Escape. The novel is set on the island of Cumbrae, and I was intrigued to discover the story of one of Scotland’s first freed slaves, Scipio Kennedy, who lived and worked in Culzean and was most likely to have been involved in some way with the contrabanders. Scipio was the much-loved servant of Lady Jean, the wife of Lord Kennedy, who insisted on bringing young Scipio with her from the Mains Estate in Milngavie, as part of her marriage contract to the young earl. Scipio had been brought to Scotland by Lady Jean’s father, Captain Andrew Douglas, as a seven-year-old boy, from the sugar plantations of Jamaica. Lady Jean said he was the most faithful servant, more like a companion, and he lived on Culzean estate until his eighties. Scipio’s story is so unique, and so special, that he features in my novel, as does Lord Kennedy, and of course, those mysterious caves that lie beneath the castle play a starring role. Those caves that store so many secrets of days of yore.
Smugglers’ Midnight Escape is available to purchase from Amazon or from
www.mauramcrobbie.com
