Merchiston Tower
Introduction
The photograph on this page of Merchiston Tower by kim traynor as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk
Merchiston Tower
Image: © kim traynor Taken: 6 Jul 2010
Classic L-shaped tower-house on the edge of Edinburgh's burgh muir. Like many tower-houses, it is popularly styled a 'Castle', although the Stewart monarchs explicitly forbade Scottish nobles to build castles - they were permitted only to fortify their houses. It was the romantically-minded Victorians with their passion for all things mediaeval who labelled every form of fortification or castellated building a 'castle', whether it was an iron-age hillfort or a castellated Balmoral-style country house. "There are in Scotland for the most part two strongholds to every league, intended both as a defence against a foreign foe, and to meet the first outbreak of a civil war." -- John Major, History of Greater Britain, 1521
Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
Image Location
Latitude
55.93336
Longitude
-3.214057