Scottish Castles Association Archive

Welcome to the Scottish Castles Association Archive — a unique resource for exploring the rich and varied history and architecture of Scotland’s castles, towers and fortified houses.

The Scottish Castles Association Archive spans more than three decades of dedicated photography and recording of Scottish Castles through professional and volunteer involvement, capturing the evolving landscape of Scotland’s architectural history. The collection includes handwritten field reports, architectural sketches, annotated maps, correspondence, newsletters, and thousands of photographs and slides. The materials reflect the diversity of contributors and the wide range of conditions in which Scottish castles are found—from carefully restored properties to ruined sites and archaeological remains. The archive is currently divided into six main sub-collections with further additions expected.

The administrative papers of the Scottish Castles Association since its inception. 

The collection bequeathed by the late Nicholas Quentin Bogdan (1947–2002), archaeologist and architectural historian and his brother Robert Andrew Bogdan (1950-2023), medieval historian and geographer, contains comprehensive personal archives of Scottish Castles. Much of Nicholas Bogdan’s work was carried out with Ian B.D. Bryce (c1950-2001). Bryce, author of A Chronology of the Castles of Scotland, 1100-1685, was an author, historian, marine engineer and taxi driver. His meticulous research supported many of the SCA collections including the Bogdan and the Rourke collections. The Bogdan collections include archaeological survey records, research notes, press cuttings, postcards, leaflets, guidebooks, and photographic material. 

Professor Richard Fawcett (1946-2023) was a historian of medieval architecture and art who worked at the Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments of Historic Scotland. Apart from his academic books on religious buildings and Scottish architecture, Fawcett wrote numerous guidebooks on Scottish Castles, abbeys and churches. This collection contains many of these guidebooks. 

This collection contains the photographic archives of the late Peter and Margaret Rourke, amateur photographers from Perth of some note who recorded and photographed castles and fortified houses in Scotland over 25 years resulting in an extensive collection of photographs of castles, retained as slides, with some of them indexed and digitised onto VHS videos. Aberdeen University also hold an additional collection of Rourke’s work (GB 0231 MS 3498). 

Digitised copies of extensive collection of photograph slides of Scottish castles.

Dr Alastair Maxwell-Irving (1935-2024) was an engineer and author of Tower Houses of the Scottish Borders (2000) and The Border Towers of Scotland: Their Evolution and Architecture (2014). He bequeathed his life-long work on Scottish border towers to the SCA. His collection includes large, printed photographs and photo albums, research material, historical surveys and excavation notes and reports, CDs, slides and photo negatives. They also include the beautiful original plans and drawings for his Border Towers of Scotland books. 

The SCA Archive is currently being processed and catalogued by the University of Stirling Archives. A searchable online catalogue is available allowing users to explore the collection by castle name, region, contributor, or document type. Digitised content from the archive will be made available to view via the online catalogue. The physical archives can be consulted in our archives reading room.