![]() Sometimes they took a cottage, but several times they stayed at the oak-panelled Kilmarnock Arms in the centre of the village. Photograph: Hulton Deutsch/Corbis/Getty ImagesĪcross many summers thereafter, Stoker returned with Florence and their son, Noel. He knew he wanted somewhere with bracing air, on the east coast: in 1892 he got the train to Peterhead and searched along the coast, and found exactly the place he’d been looking for.”īram Stoker visited Cruden Bay many times. ![]() “The theatre closed in August, and Stoker decided to find somewhere far away from London where he could concentrate on his writing projects. ![]() “Writing was a part-time job for him: his main work was at the Lyceum Theatre in London, where he worked with the leading actor of his day, Henry Irving,” says Shepherd. Shepherd, who has used hotel registers, letters, press cuttings, telegrams and interviews with local people whose parents and grandparents remember Stoker’s visits to piece together the story, believes the author deliberately pinpointed Cruden Bay, north of Aberdeen – then called Port Erroll, a small fishing village with a sandy beach and a windswept cliff-top fort named Slains Castle – as a retreat where he could concentrate on his writing. Photograph: Katherine Anne Rose/The Observer ![]() Slains Castle, in Cruden Bay, Aberdeenshire, features an octagonal room like the one described by Stoker in Dracula’s castle. ![]()
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