Tillietudlem is a fictional castle in Walter Scott's 1816 novel Old Mortality, and a modern settlement in South Lanarkshire, Scotland.
[1] 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.
[3] 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."
[4] In June 1829 Scott wrote to his friend James Skene that though he "did not think on Craignethan in writing about Tillietudlem", public taste had adopted it "as coming nearest to the ideal of the place."
"[6] Scott's son-in-law John Gibson Lockhart took the artist J. M. W. Turner to Craignethan in September 1834, approaching it from the north-east via the Nethan Gorge.
At this time a driveway from the castle heading west crossed the railway line before going a short distance south to Fence farm.
Platforms and a small ruin of a station building have been left in a dilapidated state, with the line overgrown by trees.