According to Martin Coventry in his book, The Castles of Scotland, published in 1997, Almond Castle is situated about 3 miles west of Linlithgow, just north of the Union Canal, within the grounds of a factory. Also known as Vellore, Haining Castle or the Haining, it consists of a ruined altered 15th century keep, now L. -plan. A courtyard with a wall and ditches enclose the remains of buildings added in the 16th century. It was a property of the Crawfords who built the castle around 1470 but passed to the Livingstons in 1540. They changed the name from Haining to Almond in 1633 when James, 3rd son of the Earl of Linlithgow, was created Baron Livingstone of Almond. It was forfeited by the Livingstone Earl of Callendar in 1716 after the Jacobite Rising, and the castle was abandoned in the 1750s.

[Return to Scrapbook]