Tillietudlem

Tillietudlem is a fictional castle in Walter Scott's 1816 novel Old Mortality, and a modern settlement in South Lanarkshire, Scotland.

Interest in Scott's novel attracted visitors to its supposed inspiration, Craignethan Castle, and a railway station built nearby was named after the fictional attraction. Houses built near the station developed into the modern hamlet of Tillietudlem.

In the Autumn of 1799 the poet Walter Scott made a brief visit to Craignethan Castle, and was enraptured by the scene. When Scott wrote his novel Old Mortality, published in 1816, he set it in South Lanarkshire during the late 17th century conflicts between Royalists and Covenanters, with a mixture of fictional and historical names of people and places. The plot largely takes place in and around the fictional Tillietudlem Castle: Scott's biographer John Gibson Lockhart later wrote that "The name Tillietudlem was no doubt taken from the ravine under the old castle of Lanark–which town is near Craignethan. This ravine is called Gillytudlem."Lanark is around 5.4 miles (8.7 km) from Craignethan, and the castle hill looks out over a gorge to the River Clyde. The Ordnance Survey of 1859 names the gorge "Gullie-tudlem".

Scott's novel describes Tillietudlem Castle as standing on top of "a very precipitous bank, formed by the junction of a considerable brook with the Clyde." By 1821 people had conjectured that Tillietudlem was Craignethan Castle, though the latter stands about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from the Clyde. No castles in the area fully matched the description in the book, the closest being the Castle of Orbiston at the junction of the South Calder Water with the Clyde near Bothwellhaugh, but Tillietudlem Castle was essentially fictional.

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