The castle is mentioned in two locally set novels written by Bram Stoker, The Watter's Mou' and The Mystery of the Sea.

The Hays had been a powerful dynasty in the area since the 14th century and owned large tracts of land in eastern Aberdeenshire, notably the parishes of Slains and Cruden.

[1] Erroll was declared a traitor in 1594, and Old Slains Castle was destroyed in October on the orders of King James VI.

Another document from 1732 specifically mentions that Bowness was built from new ‘by Francis, Earl of Erroll, on the king's demolishing the original castle of Slains’.

The original building was added to in 1664, when the wings around the courtyard were extended by the addition of a gallery or corridor, and was renamed New Slains Castle.

[8] And later, John Graham, 1st Viscount Dundee, contrived to have her arrested with a bogus letter from King James, purporting that an army from Ireland intended to land in South West Scotland.

Hooke landed at New Slains Castle, having been brought from Dunkirk by the fourteen-gun French navy frigate, Audacious.

The fleet eventually reached the Firth of Forth, where the intention had been to disembark the invasion army together with James Edward Stuart at Leith.

However, fifty ships from the newly formed British navy now arrived to chase the invasion fleet out of the Forth and up the northeast coast of Scotland.

James was the grandson of her sister, Lady Margaret Hay and the son of William Boyd, 4th Earl of Kilmarnock, who was executed on Tower Hill in 1746.

But there was a fire in it which blazed, and the sea, to which my windows looked, roared, and the pillows were made of some sea-fowl’s feathers which had to me a disagreeable smell.

Behind Slains runs in a long narrow inlet with beetling cliffs, sheer on either side, and at its entrance a wild turmoil of rocks are hurled together in titanic confusion.

Although New Slains Castle did not inspire the plot for Dracula, it is feasible that it provided a visual palette for Bram Stoker when he started writing the book in Cruden Bay in 1895.

New Slains Castle was rented out as a high-class summer holiday residence, notably to Robert Baden-Powell in 1900, and Prime Minister H. H. Asquith in 1903 and 1908.

It was put up for sale again in 1922 and bought by Percy P. Harvey from London who then disposed of the land, although the castle remained unsold.

An advert headlined ‘Demolition of Slains Castle’ in the Aberdeen Press and Journal, 5 September 1925,[page needed] listed various items for sale: ‘Battens, Flooring, sarking, slates, doors, windows, baths, wash hand basins, sinks, stable fittings, stone paving and other building materials’.

Now included in the inventory were the following: panel doors (yellow pine), water closets, bedroom grates, granite sills and corners.

[citation needed] It is often stated that the roof of New Slains Castle was removed to avoid paying taxes,[6] although it is not clear what happened.

In fact, most of the architecture seems to derive from a rather cohesive interval 1597 to 1664, which construction is the most expansive and includes the mortared rough granite and medieval brick.

The defensive works of the castle include the use of the North Sea cliffs; an abyss to the west that functions as a deep impassable moat; and a ruined rampart that would have been the main entrance on the south.

The internal doorways are primarily of well-preserved wooden lintel construction, with numerous examples of mortared sandstone and medieval brickwork archways.

The interior of the ground level is a maze of passageways and smaller rooms, reflecting a high state of occupancy in 17th-century times.