{"id":435,"date":"2013-04-01T11:54:09","date_gmt":"2013-04-01T11:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/?p=435"},"modified":"2013-04-01T12:11:20","modified_gmt":"2013-04-01T12:11:20","slug":"slains-castle-churchill-connection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/?p=435","title":{"rendered":"Slains Castle Churchill connection"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Slains Castle perches on top of the cliffs<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Without doubt one of the most photographed sites in Cruden Country is Slains Castle.\u00a0 Standing there, mysterious and majestic on the very edge of the pink granite cliffs, it is a must for any\u00a0 landscape photographer.\u00a0\u00a0 I am no exception, and two of my pictures of the castle appear in this year’s Cruden Country Calendar.<\/p>\n

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Slains Castle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But it is not just the dramatic location that draws people to Slains Castle.\u00a0\u00a0 There is the association with Bram Stoker and Dracula. Stoker spent time at Cruden Bay in 1895 as he was writing Dracula<\/em> and may have used the castle as the inspiration for the vampires abode.\u00a0 [See the article article in Cruden Community Website<\/a>]\u00a0\u00a0 Associations with vampires always draws people!<\/p>\n

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Were the walls of the castle the inspiration for the scene in Dracula where the Vampire crawls down his castle wall by night?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Now I read in today’s P&J that Winston Churchill spent a few days at the castle in 1912 just 3 weeks before his marriage to Clementine Hozier:<\/p>\n

On 24 August, just three weeks before his wedding, Churchill took the extraordinary decision to leave his fianc\u00e9e in London to attend to the nuptial preparations while he sought to soothe the broken heart of his former flame (Violet Asquith, the daughter of the prime minister, Herbert Asquith). He boarded the train at King\u2019s Cross for the 14-hour train journey to Cruden Bay in Aberdeenshire, where the prime minister and his family had rented Slains Castle from\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the Earl of Erroll.<\/em> (Stephen McGinity writing in the Scotsman 21 March 2013<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Having discovered a little about the railway which came to Cruden Bay and how the rich and the famous in the days gone by would make the journey to Cruden Bay for the seaside and the golf, it was wonderful to have a record of that journey made by no less than Winston Churchill, not to mention Herbet Asquith,\u00a0 the prime minister and his family.\u00a0\u00a0 There is even an account of Winston and Violet playing a round of golf at Cruden Bay. no doubt admiring the spectacular views of the castle beyond.<\/p>\n

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Under the shadow of Slains Castle, modern-day golfers are pictured at Cruden Bay Golf Course where in 1912 Winston and Violet played golf.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For readers of Gothic romantic fiction, what better story could there be than the love-lorn\u00a0 Violet missing among the cliffs, as her old flame\u00a0 returns to London to his wedding.\u00a0 The headline in today’s Daily Mail <\/a>tells it all:\u00a0\u00a0 PM’s daughter ‘jumped off a cliff’ after being ditched by Churchill: Tempestuous love triangle stayed a family secret for 100 years<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I suspect Cruden Bay and Slains Castle will see a few more visitors this summer when they read this latest revelation about this incident, revealed in the book just published by Michael Shelden\u00a0 (a professor at Indiana State University):\u00a0 “Young Titan: The Making Of Winston Churchill” (Simon & Schuster) <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Without doubt one of the most photographed sites in Cruden Country is Slains Castle.\u00a0 Standing there, mysterious and majestic on the very edge of the pink granite cliffs, it is a must for any\u00a0 landscape photographer.\u00a0\u00a0 I am no exception, and two of my pictures of the castle appear in this year’s Cruden Country Calendar….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crudencountry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=435"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":447,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435\/revisions\/447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}