On the 26th August the young historians of Seabeach took a trip to Craigmillar Castle to explore it’s ruins.
This was a very exciting trip for us as it concluded our ‘Castles’ focus nicely and was definitely the highlight of the topic!
We explored the highs including the towers, the roof and the death defying spiral staircases as well as the lows; The basement, prison and Stacey’s personal favourite… the wine cellar!!
Some of our wee explorers found the darker rooms and spaces a little scary (I say scary, I of course mean that they wandered around terrifying themselves with thoughts of dungeons, dragons and ghouls!) On the whole though this was a fantastic opportunity to step back in time to explore and discover a piece of Edinburgh’s history… Did you know that Mary Queen of Scots used this particular residence as a retreat to rehabilitate herself after a bout of depression? (everyday is a school day folks!)
We used our imaginations to picture just what the castle may of looked like in it’s glory days and what threats it may have came up against. (the answers to this ranged from the sensible “people who want to fight”, “people who want to steal from the castles” to the bizarre… “a vampire called Jerome who wanted to bite the queens neck” or “a dragon that breathes fire out of it’s mouth to kill everyone”) One thing’s for sure, this trip certainly got the pre-schoolers minds working overtime which in turn lent itself to some crazy conversations.
