'Forgotten' Saltcoats Castle and its connection to Scotland's last wild boar

SALTCOATS Castle is one of East Lothian’s ‘forgotten’ castles, situated in farmland half a mile south of Gullane.

It has been uninhabited for more than 200 years and is today badly ruined and overgrown with noxious vegetation, with nettles and brambles abounding on the site.

It was constructed in 1590 or thereabouts by Patrick Livingstone of Saltcoats.

An armorial panel relocated from the castle to a nearby cottage has the arms of the Livingstone family and the initials of the builder and his wife Margaret Fettis of Fawside.

The castle has some interesting and unusual architectural features, with a courtyard enclosure and two tall towers to the west, with a vaulted arch between them.

As highlighted in an article by Stravaiging around Scotland, a lectern-style doo’cot was built immediately to the north of these buildings and from its style it has been dated to the mid-17th century.

Also, in the late 17th century an outer wall was added, enclosing an orchard and extensive gardens which lay to the north, east and south of the castle courtyard.

A lintel over a door in the north wall of the garden carries the date 1695 and the initials GL, presumably for the same George Livingstone who is mentioned in the Records of Parliament as George Levingstoun of Saltcoats in 1661.

Saltcoats Castle remained in the Livingstone family until an heiress married Alexander Menzies of Culterallers.

Their daughter, Margaret Menzies, married John Hamilton of Pencaitland in 1709, and Saltcoats became the property of that family.

Margaret outlived her husband and married secondly William Carmichael, son of the 1st Earl of Hyndford.

She also outlived him and died in 1790, the final resident of Saltcoats Castle.

In about 1810, the castle began to be used as a source of stone for local building work, constructing farm cottages and stone walls, and leading to the destruction of much of Saltcoats Castle.

Whereas there is consensus that the Scottish population of wild boar was wiped out in the late 16th or early 17th century, there are divergent opinions as to where the last specimen was hunted down.

One of the claims to fame of Saltcoats Castle is that the last wild boar in Scotland was said to have been killed not far away.

The East Lothian postcard kingpin Reginald Phillimore had heard that it was hunted down and slain by Livingstone of Saltcoats, and one of his cards has a vignette of the last wild boar running for its life, with a spear-wielding huntsman in hot pursuit on horseback (see below).

As we know, the Livingstone family definitely inhabited Saltcoats at the relevant time, and one of them is said to have received a royal gift in exchange for the head of the last wild boar.

According to another version of the Saltcoats boar legend, it was a particularly large and ferocious wild boar that was killed near Saltcoats, not the ultimate specimen; yet another version has the valiant Livingstone killing a wild boar that had been terrorising Gullane and its surroundings, being awarded the salt marsh land south of Gullane to build his castle by the king.

Saltcoats has an East Lothian rival, namely the hamlet of Prora, near Drem, where a ‘Boar Stone’ is said to mark the site where the last wild boar in Haddingtonshire had been slain.

This stone used to stand in a field but, since it impeded the agricultural pursuits, it was removed to the garden of Prora Farmhouse, where I have seen it (see below).

It was inspected by a party of Edinburgh archaeologists in 1915 and found to be a fragment from a medieval cross, however.

The name of Swinton, Berwickshire, originated as ‘Swine’s Town’ because of the abundance of wild boars in this part of the country.

The Swinton family have a wild boar in their coat of arms and there is a tradition that the last wild boar in Scotland was killed near the village.

Finally, we have the village of Torinturk, Argyll and Bute, whose name means ‘Hill of the Boar’ in Gaelic; there are many advocates, on the internet and elsewhere, claiming that the last wild boar in Scotland was slain here.

Today, there are several wild boar farms in Scotland, from which the tough and canny animals occasionally escape.

There are established herds of free-living wild boar in England, and in September 2006, a wild boar was photographed near Fort William, quite possibly the first of these animals to put its trotters on Scottish soil for many a century, but hardly the last, I would think.

When visiting Saltcoats, I kept a close lookout for wild boars but found none of them, having to be content with returning home for a meal of Scottish wild boar cutlets cooked the Swedish way.

• The Courier thanks the website Stravaiging around Scotland for the historical research which helped compile this article