Airbnbs don’t come much more storied than the one I’m standing in. The open staircase and light fittings haven’t changed in 50 years. Outside stands a cherry tree, summer blossoms in full bloom, and across a narrow road lies an old graveyard with a derelict Presbyterian church at its heart. Diehard horror fans will recognise it in an instant.
Welcome to ‘Wicker Country’, a picturesque corner of south-west Scotland’s Dumfries and Galloway region that’s alive with film lore. Here, via the power of movie magic and some ingenious location scouting, the fictional Hebridean island of Summerisle was pieced together from a dozen or so castles, gardens, towns villages and clifftops in the 1973 British folk horror classic ‘The Wicker Man’.
For the uninitiated, Robin Hardy’s extraordinary debut film – a holy text of British cinema that’s back on the big screen this week to mark its half-centennial – follows Christian police sergeant Neil Howie (Edward Woodward) to Summerisle on the trail of a missing girl, Rowan Morrison. There, he finds a deeply off-kilter community led by Christopher Lee’s Lord Summerisle, a pagan fertility cult that celebrates itself via erotically-charged folk songs. Of course – and a big spoiler warning here – the disappearance is part of a deadly game of bait and switch: Howie has been lured to the island as a human sacrifice to placate the gods and secure the island’s next harvest. Ahead lies a fiery death in a giant clifftop wicker man and one of the greatest endings in horror movie history.
The Airbnb I’ve been invited into – once a schoolhouse itself – was used as Summerisle’s classroom back in October 1972, when the film crew’s lorries gingerly negotiated the country lanes of the tiny settlement of Anwoth. Here, Hardy filmed the morally outraged Howie witnessing a maypole dance before stepping into the class to quiz the inscrutable children and their teacher about their missing classmate. Later, Howie will visit the deconsecrated kirk and recoil from its defilement by the island’s pagans. Visitors still leave eggs and dandelions there, the kind of cinephile tribute that would not have gone down well with the puritanical copper.
You really feel the otherworldliness here. It’s almost like time has stopped
As the sun sets slowly on this isolated corner of Scotland, it induces a shiver. My local tour guide, Kathleen of Mostly Ghostly Tours, explains that a spectral figure was spotted by visitors as recently as January: a top-hatted man floating serenely through the churchyard wall. The ghosts are real, as well as figurative, in this historic hamlet.
‘You really feel the otherworldliness here,’ says Kathleen, who with her fellow tour guides Kenny, Mary and Geordie-in-exile John, combines encyclopedic local knowledge with the black clobber of Victorian undertakers. ‘It’s almost like time has stopped.’
Two and a bit days in Galloway and you’ll feel much the same way. A long weekend here will get you to nearly all of ‘The Wicker Man’s key locations (Somerset’s Wookey Hole has a key cameo, too). On screen, Howie arrives on Summerisle by seaplane; IRL, you can travel down from Glasgow, a couple of hours to the north, or take the train to Dumfries via Carlisle. Either way, a hire car is essential. There are a dozen or so locations to pick from and limited public transport options.
My base is a comfy country hotel in Newton Stewart, a handy springboard to explore an area that spans about 30 or so miles in each direction. The town was the film’s production base back in 1972, with Britt Eckland and co hunkering down at the now defunct Kirroughtree Hotel when not shivering on location. ‘The most dismal place in Creation,’ grumbled the Swedish star in The Sunday Express at the time.
In a sun-drenched June, even Eckland would find something to love here.
Rather than pagan gods, it’s the Gulf Stream that makes this part of the world so lush. At Logan Botanic Gardens, close to Scotland’s most southerly point and a half hour drive from Newton Stewart, the themes of ‘The Wicker Man’ – fertility and rebirth – coalesce neatly. In the film, Lord Summerisle’s stroll through his garden with Sergeant Howie was filmed among the outsized tropical palms and tree ferns. In the gift shop, they still remember the crew’s arrival and a cameo appearance from the garden’s curator in the film.
The other scenes set at Summerisle’s imposing country pile were filmed at two locations up the coast – both well worth a visit. A stroll through the 75-acre grounds of Castle Kennedy will take you past the grassy mound on which naked girls dance when Sgt Howie first visits the malevolent aristocrat, as well as the lakeside path along which Howie, disguised as Punch, infiltrates the islanders’ May Day procession later in the film. The polystyrene props used as standing stones are long gone, but the ruins of the castle offer an instantly recognisable backdrop.
I don’t know anyone who can watch the film now without going: ‘Oh look, there’s so-and-so!’
Forty miles to the north, Ayrshire’s Culzean Castle, a Robert Adam-designed clifftop edifice with stunning views across to the Isle of Aran, was used as the exterior of Lord Summerisle’s mansion. A tour of the castle will take you through the grand dining room where Summerisle and Howie meet, as well the castle’s justly famed oval staircase and the vast 18th-century kitchen that once catered for President Eisenhower during his visits.
It’s rare to find a film as etched into a local landscape as ‘The Wicker Man’ – not least because it’s vanishingly rare for a film to eschew studio sound stages so completely in favour of weather-reliant locations all clustered in one area. And few films have seeped into local lore as completely, or attracted visitors from around the world with such frequency (Anwoth Old Schoolhouse recently hosted two fans from America).
Everywhere I go, people have a story to tell about The Wicker Man
Everywhere I go, people have a story to tell about the film. At the visitor centre in Kirkcudbright, a much-used location on the River Dee, the lady behind the counter tells me that a few of her friends even joined the production. ‘It was a bit of a wild time,’ she laughs. ‘I don’t know anyone who can watch the film now without going: “Oh look, there’s so-and-so!” What’s it like to watch the film now, I ask. ‘I can’t watch it for what it is,’ she tells me, ‘I can only watch it and recognise the locations.’
The owner of a local bookshop recalls playing around the stumps of the original wicker man on the cliffs at Burrow Head as a kid. Even those wood remnants are gone now. A holiday park drains further cinematic grandeur from the setting of ‘The Wicker Man’s fiery climax.
Not that it puts off the horror aficionados who make the pilgrimage – and nor should it. St Ninian’s Cave, where Howie finally stumbles upon Rowan Morrison, is only a few miles away to the west, too. I head in the other direction, towards the Isle of Whithorn, a postcard of a fishing village that, yes, features in the movie too. The Steam Packet Inn, a foodie pub famed for its local seafood, hosted a few scenes that never made it into the final film, victims of a brutal cut that studio heads imposed ahead of its release.
It’s a reminder that 50 years ago, its distributor saw ‘The Wicker Man’ as a throwaway B-movie to double bill with Nicolas Roeg’s ‘Don’t Look Now’. Of course, these days the two films both share equal billing as twin greats of British cinema. As Sergeant Howie would no doubt testify, it’s funny how things work out.
Three great things to do in Galloway (if you’re not into ‘The Wicker Man’)
1. Go book browsing in Wigtown
Bookworms will not want to miss the chance to take a stroll through Scotland’s answer to Hay-on-Wye. Nestled in the Galloway Hills, it’s home to a ten-day book festival every September, but the dozen or so second-hand bookshops are likely to yield a treasure or two all year round.
2. Galloway Forest Park
If you prefer two-wheels to four, Galloway’s stunning Forest Park is home to two 7stanes mountain biking centres and spectacular trails to explore. Alternatively, you could just take a load off and look out for one or two of the local red squirrels or do a spot of stargazing. It’s the first UK park to be awarded Dark Sky Park status, so expect crystalline skies and live-enhancing tranquility.
3. Learn to paint in Kirkcudbright
An artists’ paradise has blossomed at the mouth of the River Dee: Kirkcudbright (pronounced ‘kir–coo–bree’) is officially ‘the Artists’ Town’, with painters, sculptors and craftworkers settling here down the years. An annual Arts & Crafts Trail runs in August and offers a big old open-house for artistically-inclined visitors to check out the studios. It plays a key role in ‘The Wicker Man’ too – here, Howie is led on a merry dance through the town’s back streets and alleys.
Time Out was a guest of Visit Scotland, Creebridge House Hotel and Trainline. Head here for further information on visiting the south of Scotland – including a ‘Wicker Man’ itinerary.
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