A visit to Castle Dracula

The novelist Bram Stoker visited Cruden Bay, then known as Port Erroll, on a walking holiday to Aberdeenshire in 1893. He returned in 1894, booking into the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel. The following year he again checked into  the hotel and began to write the early chapters of of his most famous novel  Dracula.

Nearby New Slains Castle with its dramatic cliff-top location, is believed to have acted as a “visual palette” , inspiring some of the scenes in the novel. For example, Slains Castle contains an octagonal hall that was used as a reception room for visitors. In the novel Dracula  the protagonist Jonathan Harker writes, "The Count halted, putting down my bags, closed the door, and crossing the room, opened another door which led into a small octagonal room lit by a single lamp, and seemingly without a window of any sort." 

The "extra" shows the octagonal hall, now roofless and open to the sky. The openings in the walls are not windows but doors. In Stoker's day the castle was still intact and furnished as can be seen in the second "extra" which shows the windowless octagonal room complete with a single lamp.

I had a quick chat with the Count who tells me that he is much troubled by the increase in tourists following the recent BBC production of Dracula. Apparently there are now so many that a poor Vampire can't get a decent day's sleep!