Kincardine Castle Kincardineshire

Kincardine Castle is a much ruined 13th century royal castle occupying a low hill near Fettercairn, and is accessible on foot, although most of the ruins are overgrown with vegetation. Nearby fields are the site of a lost borough of the same name, of which nothing remains above ground, and from which the old county took its name. About a mile to the north is a large earthwork known as Green Castle, which is probably an earlier royal fortification.

Kincardine Castle first appears on record in 1212, but then vanishes from records until after the English occupation of the 1290s, at which point it was almost certainly destroyed, although no record relates to this. The castle and lands were granted away by Robert the Bruce and King David II, and were later the property of the Earls of Ross. The castle itself was probably abandoned by the earls and fell into disrepair after the Lords of the Isles, claiming the earldom of Ross, were suppressed in the mid 15th century. The castle and borough have not benefitted from systematic archaeology, making the latter history rather opaque. The county was created in 1532 by the Earl Marischal, but the castle was no longer in use by that time, and the borough declined  with the last occupancy being the late 18th century.

HES Canmore database entry