Tour Scotland travel video clip, with Scottish music, of New Slains Castle on cliff top site overlooking the North Sea on ancestry visit to the coast of Aberdeenshire. The 16th Century castle is thought to have inspired the Irish author, Bram Stoker's, Dracula. The Clan Hay were a powerful family in the area for generations, having possessed the lands of Slains since the 14th century. In 1453 Sir William Hay, the clan chief, was made Earl of Erroll by King James II. At this time the local seat of power was Old Slains Castle, near Collieston some five miles to the South West. Francis Hay, 9th Earl of Erroll, succeeded in 1585, and converted to Roman Catholicism. He conspired with other Catholic nobles, including the Earl of Huntly, with whom he joined in a brief rebellion in 1589. Erroll was declared a traitor in 1594, and Old Slains Castle was destroyed in October on the orders of King James VI. Earlier distinguished visitors to the castle include Samuel Johnson and James Boswell on their tour of the Highlands and Islands
Abraham Bram Stoker was born on 8 November 1847 at 15 Marino Crescent, Clontarf, on the northside of Dublin, Ireland. His parents were Abraham Stoker, born 1799, died 876, from Dublin and Charlotte Mathilda Blake Thornley, born 1818, died 1901, who was raised in County Sligo. Stoker was bedridden with an unknown illness until he started school at the age of seven, when he made a complete recovery. After his recovery, he grew up without further serious illnesses, even excelling as an athlete at Trinity College, Dublin, which he attended from 1864 to 1870. In 1878, Stoker married Florence Balcombe, daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel James Balcombe of 1 Marino Crescent. She was a celebrated beauty whose former suitor had been Oscar Wilde. The Stokers moved to London, England, where Stoker became acting manager and then business manager of Irving's Lyceum Theatre, London, a post he held for 27 years. Stoker was a regular visitor to Cruden Bay in Scotland between 1893 and 1910. His month long holidays to the Aberdeenshire coastal village provided a large portion of available time for writing his books. Two novels were set in Cruden Bay: The Watter's Mou' in 1895 and The Mystery of the Sea in 1902. He started writing Dracula here in 1895 while in residence at the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel. Dracula is an epistolary novel, written as a collection of realistic but completely fictional diary entries, telegrams, letters, ship's logs, and newspaper clippings, all of which added a level of detailed realism to the story, a skill which Stoker had developed as a newspaper writer. After suffering a number of strokes, Stoker died at No. 26 St George's Square, London, England, on 20 April 1912. The original 541-page typescript of Dracula was believed to have been lost until it was found in a barn in north west Pennsylvania, America, in the early 1980s
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