Castle of Old Wick
The Castle of Old Wick, sometimes called Castle Oliphant or Old Wick Castle, is one of the oldest and most atmospheric tower houses in Scotland, standing in dramatic isolation on a narrow promontory of rock above the crashing waters of the North Sea on the Caithness coast. It is widely regarded as one of the finest examples of a Norse-influenced tower house in Britain, and its age, its extreme coastal setting, and its remarkable state of preservation for a structure of its vintage make it one of the most compelling and undervisited heritage sites in northern Scotland. Historic Environment Scotland lists it as a scheduled ancient monument, and it is accessible to the public free of charge, drawing walkers, historians, and those simply seeking one of the most elemental and striking views the Scottish coastline has to offer.
The castle is generally dated to the twelfth century, making it among the earliest surviving stone tower houses in Scotland and possibly in Britain as a whole. Its origins lie in the period of Norse influence over Caithness and the northern mainland, when the region was contested between Scandinavian and Scottish power, and the architecture of the tower reflects this Nordic heritage, being a plain, almost severe rectangular keep without the later elaborations seen in more southerly Scottish castles. The Oliphant family, who gave the structure one of its alternative names, held the castle for a period, and it later passed through the hands of various noble families connected to the turbulent medieval politics of the far north. Its position — cut off on a sea stack accessible only by a narrow neck of land — was clearly chosen for defence above all else, giving its occupants command of the coastline and protection from landward attack simultaneously.
In person, the castle is a profound and slightly unsettling experience. What survives is the shell of the tower itself, rising perhaps fifteen metres from its rocky platform, with the walls still largely intact to a considerable height on several sides, while one face has partially collapsed, opening the interior to the sky. The masonry is of the local grey sandstone that characterises so much of Caithness, weather-worn and encrusted with lichen in shades of orange, grey and black, giving the whole structure a quality of having grown organically from the rock beneath it. The wind is almost constant here, and the sound of the sea — churning through the geo, or inlet, that separates the castle stack from the clifftop on one side, and breaking against the open ocean face on the other — creates a constant, disorienting roar that seems to come from every direction at once. On calm days the water below turns a deep, translucent green, but in any kind of swell the spray reaches high up the rock face.
The surrounding landscape is quintessential Caithness: wide, flat, almost treeless agricultural land running right to the cliff edge, with the sea stretching away to the horizon in multiple directions. The town of Wick lies roughly two kilometres to the north and provides all necessary services. The coastal path between Wick and the castle passes several other notable features, including the remains of Castle of Girnigoe and Castle Sinclair, which together form one of the most remarkable concentrations of ruined medieval fortifications on any stretch of Scottish coastline. The Caithness coast here is also rich in seabird life, with fulmars, kittiwakes and guillemots nesting on the cliffs, and the cliffside walking in either direction from Old Wick is rewarding for those with a head for heights.
Access to the castle is straightforward on foot. A track and then a path lead south from the outskirts of Wick, and the walk is approximately forty-five minutes each way at a gentle pace. There is limited parking near the start of the path. Visitors should be aware that the final approach across the neck of rock to the castle itself requires care, as the ground is uneven and exposed, and the cliff edges on both sides are unfenced and precipitous. The castle interior can be entered through the ground-floor opening, though the interior is essentially a roofless shell and there is nothing to see in structural terms beyond the bare walls. The best time to visit is in the long days of summer, when the evening light on the stone is extraordinary and the sea takes on a colour quite unlike anything further south, but even in winter — when few tourists venture here — there is a raw, magnificent quality to the place that is entirely its own.
One of the most remarkable aspects of Old Wick is how completely it is overlooked. The castles of Girnigoe and Sinclair a little further up the coast receive more attention partly because of their more complex and dramatic history, but Old Wick is the older structure by several centuries and arguably the more architecturally significant. The fact that a twelfth-century Norse tower house survives at this height and in this condition on an exposed North Sea coast is genuinely extraordinary. Local tradition has attached various stories to the site over the centuries, and the castle appears in the background of the rich and violent history of the Sinclair earls of Caithness, who dominated this corner of Scotland for generations. Standing inside its broken walls with the wind driving in from the sea and the sound of the waves far below, it is possible to feel the full weight of its age in a way that more visited and more managed heritage sites rarely permit.