Findlater Castle

The Castle

Findlater Castle sits on a cliff between Cullen and Sandend. It was first recorded in 1246, held by the Ogilvies from the 1400s until they moved to Cullen House, besieged by Mary Queen of Scots in 1562, and abandoned by the 1650s. The ruin is now in the care of the Seafield Estate, with a car park, a viewing point and an information board. In 2025 it was closed for two months while Christopher Nolan filmed The Odyssey there.

The Idea

This is my own site, in the same family as Live Breathe Scotland. I wanted one place with the history told properly, the practical details for visiting, and footage that shows why people drive out to see it.

• Tell the full story: the castle, the Ogilvies, the ghost, the doocot and the filming
• Show the place as it is, from the air and in 360 degrees
• Help people visit safely, with directions, parking and a warning about the ruins
• Give the family historians somewhere to leave their mark
• Be found for everything from the castle itself to the ghost and the film

The Site

I built it from scratch, with a serif face called Moulin over the drone footage.

• A full-screen drone film on the homepage, and a 360° drone panorama you can turn around in
• History pages: the castle from 1246, the Ogilvies from 1163, the ghost of Findlater, and the beehive doocot restored in 1992 with around 700 nesting boxes
• Pages on The Odyssey filming in 2025 and on Liam St John’s music videos shot at the castle
• Ten FAQs, from how to pronounce the name to where the nearest toilets are
• A Visit page with directions, a Google map to the car park and a safety warning about the ruins
• A moderated guestbook with spam protection, which in its first five months drew entries from Oklahoma, Lithuania, New Zealand, Somerset and Fife, several from Findlaters and Ogilvies tracing their family
• A Save Findlater page asking visitors to write to the MSP and MP
• Structured data on every page, so Google knows it’s a tourist attraction with FAQs, articles and a historic building
• Pictures served in WebP for speed

“This is a great web site and an interesting read.”

Robert Findlater, a visitor from Essex, in the site’s guestbook

The outcome

People searching for the castle find the history, the film and how to get there in one place, and the guestbook shows who’s reading: Findlaters and Ogilvies from around the world, and visitors who came because of the drone film.

One of them, Fraser Smart from Fife, wrote that having seen the drone video he was “compelled to visit”.

Screens from the site