Scottish Castles

[andi]

The picture of Eilean Donan looks familiar, doesn't it? Guess we have seen it before
Glad you're enjoying the thread.

[dreamy]

Cawdor Castle



Cawdor Castle is located 12 miles east of Inverness in the eastern heart of the Scottish Highlands.

Set in wooded grounds, the present buildings date from the early 14th century, but the old drawbridge over the defensive ditch now takes tourists into the central square tower.


Once through the portcullis, you can visit the restaurant and bookshop to your left, or if you have paid to enter the castle itself, turn right and begin the tour of the drawing room (and the minstrel's gallery), then go up the stairs to the lovely tapestry bedroom, followed by the yellow room, across the landing into more bedrooms overlooking the stream, eventually making your way into the old tower room. The latter incorporates a hidden trapdoor used to take any unwelcome visitor straight down a chute carved within the thickness of the castle wall and into a dungeon which has no other means of entry or exit. It was only discovered in 1976 during building work on the room above and has now been partially opened up for viewing.

Take the narrow stone stairwell down into the very bowels of the castle and you will see the dungeon, as well as an ancient tree with a good story. Legend has it that one day the Thane of Cawdor set a donkey laden with gold to roam the countryside, saying that wherever it chose to rest for the night would become the site of his castle. The donkey lay down by a tree and the castle was built around it. For many years it was thought to be a hawthorn, but it is in fact a holly tree which died in about 1372. The Cawdor Toast is 'Flourish the Thorn!'

The iron yett here was brought from nearby Lochindorb Castle around 1455 when the Scottish Privy Council instructed the Thane of Cawdor to dismantle Lochindorb after it had been forfeited by the Earl of Moray.

After passing by the main stairs and through the dining room, then the new and old kitchens, the tour ends with the larder which houses a peculiar mixture of old cycles and fascinating artefacts such as the gardener's snow shoes. From there you pass through the souvenir shop and then out into the grounds once more. Opposite the shop exit is the walled maze and garden.

Alternatively you can take the path that winds around towards the brown peaty stream known as the Cawdor burn which flows into the River Nairn. Cross over the wooden blue bridge and you will find yourself in Cawdor's vast expanse of woodland. Walk a short distance and you can get a reasonable view of the rear of the castle. Continue and you can go on one of the signposted nature trails but you will be going the wrong way round to see the markers, so it is better to start on the opposite bank and enter the forest from the door in the main walled garden. That brings you out in the woods at the rear of the castle where a marker board indicates 4 colour-coded trails. You can do a short walk, medium, long or longer! You may find that the blue walk of 2 miles is quite far enough or just opt for the short red trail. Stick to the paths as it is easy to get lost. In wet weather, it may be slippery underfoot in some places. In springtime you will see carpets of bluebells under the trees.

In colourful contrast to the stony backdrop of the castle, the walled garden provides a wealth of photographic opportunities. In the summer, flower beds of reds, oranges, purples and whites vie for attention with the tunnel of roses and Copper beeches. In May, the cherry blossom trees sit in pools of fallen pink petals. July and August are the best times to visit to see the most colour in the gardens, but since Scottish summers are notoriously unpredictable, nothing can be guaranteed!



The castle and grounds are open from May to mid
October between 10am and 5.30pm. Disabled access to the grounds and some parts of the castle. Admission charge for castle and grounds, or for access to the grounds only. Family tickets and group discount available.
Contact details:
Telephone [phone] / Fax: [phone] / Email: [e-mail]
Visit the official web site at cawdorcastle.com for more info and photos.

For information about the Cawdor Estate (including holiday cottages to rent), see cawdor.com. Please note that accommodation is not available at the castle itself.



The castle has a souvenir shop, book shop and licensed restaurant, as well as a picnic area and woollen shop outside the main grounds. The castle's 9-hole golf course is also open from June to October and costs 6 pounds for a round.
The official web site includes an online shopping facility for some Cawdor gift items and the most excellent guidebook which is available in several languages.


Two ghosts are said to haunt Cawdor Castle, one a lady in a blue velvet dress, the other is thought to be John Campbell, the first Lord Cawdor.

For more about the Cawdor thanes and the Calder/Caddell family name, read the article by Bill Caddell which ends with Muriel's story. This is one of most fascinating episodes in Cawdor's history and dates back to the end of the 15th century when following the untimely death of the 8th Thane, the sole heiress was his baby daughter Muriel Calder. A party of Campbells forcibly took her from Kilravock Castle where she was staying with her grandmother at harvest time. Her quick-witted nurse branded her on the hip with a red-hot key so that she could be identified by the family were she ever found again. The tip of her little finger was bitten off to also help with subsequent identification. Only a very young child, she was taken by the men to Inveraray Castle. In 1510 when she was old enough to be married, she wedded Sir John Campbell, the Earl of Argyll's son. Despite this traumatic beginning, the 'red-haired lassie' would seem to have enjoyed her life to a large extent. The couple returned to Cawdor in 1524 and Muriel became Thaness of Cawdor herself after her husband died in 1546. She lived until 1575.


If you have the opportunity, it is worth looking around Cawdor village and its old church.

www.castles.org/Chatelaine/CAWDOR.HTM

[andi]

Inveraray Castle



This multi-turreted mock Gothic palace is the family home of the powerful Clan Campbell, who have been the Dukes of Argyll since 1701

Inverary Castle has always been something of an oddity. It does not possess the authenticity of a medieval fortress or the grandeur of a stately home. Set amid the glorious scenery of Argyllshire, it looks more like a overblown model fort than a castle, the figment of a toy - designer's imagination rather than a serious piece of architecture. It is an enigmatic building, too.


Inverary is the home of the Dukes of Argyll and headquarters of the Campbell clan. The castle and the small town beside Loch Fyne were both the brainchild of Archibald Campbell, the third Duke. Until the seventeenth century, when they became absentee landlords, the family had lived in a fifteenth-century L-shaped tower house beside the Aray. If the 'Gothick' castle in a highland wilderness strikes us as a little out of place today, how much more incongruous it must have appeared when first built, in the middle of the eighteenth century. In 1743, when the sixty-two year old Archibald inherited from his brother the Argyll title and the estates he had not visited for nigh on thirty years, there was no carriage road within forty miles of Inverary. The old castle was a ruin and the town a squalid little collection of insanitary huts beside the loch. But the age of conscience and philanthropy was dawning. No self-respecting Duke could inhabit a brand new castle and leave his tenants in mean and sordid dwellings. So while the mottled green castle rose on the hill, beneath it the town of Inverary was rebuilt with comfortable houses and public buildings in the classical style (more attractive than the laird's own place, some would say), and the townspeople were enabled to prosper from the Duke's patronage, tourism and a newly-established spinning industry.



The design of Inverary arose out of an original concept by Vanbrugh, but
the exterior of the castle as it stands today is principally the work of Roger Morris, assisted by William Adam and his sons John and Robert. A serious fire in 1877 led to some very unfortunate reconstruction of the upper parts by Anthony Salin, which destroyed the wholeness of the eighteenth-century plan. The classical interior was arranged by Robert

The castle is rectangular in shape, with tall, battlemented drum towers lightly attached at each corner. The windows in the towers and on the first two floors are round-headed, with pointed gothic mouldings above. The door in the south front, originally intended as the principal entrance, is well proportioned and hooded with a fine ogee arch. A broad dry moat follows the contours of the walls. The third floor is entirely Salin's work and replaces the original castellated wall head. The architect probably had Chateau Rambouillet in mind when he undertook the rebuilding, but he patently failed to capture the grace of his model. The garret obscures much of the tower behind it, and its rectangular dormers, each set back from the sharp shape of a surmounting equilateral triangle, upset the balance of Morris' original design. The lofty cones on the towers, which help give the castle its Never-Never Land look, are another of Salin's ideas. Unfortunately, they too detract from the height of the central tower. In fact, the rectangular tower in the centre of the building is not altogether a successful concept anyway, partly because it was completed later than the original castle and the builders employed granite of a different hue, and partly because of the insubstantial narrow tracery on its large gothic windows. Before we dismiss Salin as nothing but an architectural vandal, however, it is worth pointing out that he did draw up plans for a complete reconstruction and extension of the castle in the baronial style, including a gigantic new tower in one corner. The relatively minor alterations he eventually
made were only the remnants of this grander design, within which they would
undoubtably have appeared far more appropriate.


Unkind though it may seem, mention must be made of the iron appurtenances which have been added to the outside of the castle. These include the inappropriate drainpipes, which, together with horizontal moulding between the storeys, serve to divide the facades into square blocks, and the extraordinary wedge-shaped entrance porch in the north. The best that can be said for the latter is that it enables visitors to enter the castle from their vehicles without getting wet, though whether it was necessary to produce a piece of railway station to enable them to do this is a debatable point. Better the occasional wet feet or ruined hair-do than that the castle should have been so marred.


The castle interior is a delightful contrast to the bizarre external elevations. Particularly attractive are the State Dining Room, with its exquisitely painted wall panels and ceiling design by Robert Adam, the elaborate Tapestry Drawing Room, and the form (but not the bloodthirsty display even the bills have 'Argyll' engraved on them) of the Armoury Hall. The castle's wonderful collection of Oriental and European porcelain is arranged in cabinets within a China Turret, whose light Wedgewood-style papier mache ceiling is the very antithesis of the buildings jumbled exterior. There are many treasures, including eighteenth-century Beauvais tapestries, superb furniture (there are ten sets of gilded chairs, some even upholstered with Beauvais tapestry), and paintings by Kneller and Gainsborough. Particularly eye-catching are four nefs: German silver-gilt table decorations in the form of wheeled ships.

One of the most impressive displays is the Armoury Hall, the Campbell collected early weaponry to fight the Jacobite rebels. In the stable the Combined Operations Museum commemorates the 250,000 allied troops who trained at Inveraray during World World II.

An early Gothic Revival castle built in the mid-eighteenth century by Roger Moris. In 1773 Dr. Johnson journeyed through Scotland and visited the castle. His comment: "What I admire here, is the total defiance of expense."

www.castles.org/castles/Europe/Western_Europe/United_Kingdom/Scotland/Inveraray-Argyll/index.htm

[andi]

Stalker Castle

Castle Stalker is located 25 miles north of Oban on the west coast of Scotland.



Castle Stalker – in the Gaelic, Stalcaire, meaning Hunter or Falconer – is believed originally to have been the site of a Fortalice (a small fortified building) belonging to the MacDougalls when they were Lords of Lorn, and built around 1320. The MacDougalls lost their title after their defeat by King Bruce at Brander Pass in 1308 but regained it for a period after 1328. In about 1388 the Lordship of Lorn passed to the Stewarts, the lands including Castle Stalker.

It is believed that Castle Stalker, much in its present form, was built by the then Lord of Lorn, Sir John Stewart, who had an illegitimate son in 1446, and it is reasonable to suppose that he built and occupied the Castle about that time. In 1463 Sir John Stewart was keen to legitimise his son by getting married to his Mother, a MacLaren, at Dunstaffnage when he was murdered outside the church by Alan MacCoul, a renegade MacDougall, although he survived long enough to complete the marriage and legitimise his son, Dugald, who became the First Chief of Appin. The Stewarts had their revenge on MacCoul at the Battle of Stalc in 1468 opposite the Castle when the Stewarts and MacLaren together defeated the MacDougalls, and Alan MacCoul was killed by Dugald himself. The site of this Battle is marked by a memorial stone in the Churchyard in Portnacroish.

In 1497 the Stewarts and MacLarens carried out a combined raid against MacDonald of Keppoch as a reprisal for cattle reiving, but Dugald Stewart was killed and succeeded as Chief of Appin by his son Duncan. King James IV of Scotland, born in 1473, was a cousin of the Stewarts of Appin and when he came of age made frequent hunting journeys to the Highlands. It is understood that he stayed quite often at Castle Stalker, using it as a base for hunting and hawking for which he had a passion. It is thought that further improvements were made to the Castle at this time including the possible addition of what is now the top floor and roof, and that the Coat of Arms over the front door may be the Royal Arms of that time.

Duncan Stewart was murdered by the McLeans at Duart Castle in 1512 and succeeded by his younger brother Alan Stewart as the third Chief. In 1513 the Stewarts of Appin supported King James IV at the Battle of Flodden. The Stewart Chief and is five sons were all present at the Battle but all managed to survive what was otherwise a massive defeat in which the King was killed.

In 1520 Sir Alexander Stewart of Invernahyle was fishing off the small island next to Castle Stalker when he was surprised and murdered by a party of Campbells. Tradition has it that the nurse of his baby son, Donald Stewart, hid the baby in the Castle and when the Campbells left the nurse returned, found the baby still alive and took refuge in Morven.

Young Donald became renowned for his strength and was known as "Donald of the Hammers" – in the Gaelic "Donald nan Ord" – as he could wield a blacksmith's hammer in each hand with ease. In 1544 he raised the Stewarts of Appin and went to Dunstaffnage where they killed nine Campbells in revenge for the murder of his Father. Donald nan Ord also led the Stewarts at the Battle of Pinkie on the 10th September 1547. He died in 1607 and is buried on Lismore where his faithful henchman, a Carmichael, also lies buried.

In around 1620 the Castle passed into the hands of the Campbells of Airds as a result of a drunken wager by the 7th Stewart Chief, Duncan, in exchange for an eight-oared wherry.

The Stewarts of Appin, under Stewart if Ardsheal, regained the Castle in 1689 when they came out with King James VII (otherwise James II) against King William but after defeat at the battle of Dunkeld the Castle was again forfeited to the Campbells. The Stewarts under Ardsheal refused to hand it over when it was then besieged by the Campbells for several months until Ardsheal was granted an honourable surrender in 1690.

At the time of the 1745 Rising Castle Stalker was held by the Campbells with a Garrison of about 59 Government troops. Although the Stewarts of Appin were solidly behind Prince Charles, and raised a regiment of 300, the Castle was too strong for them to take and their 2lb cannon-balls merely bounced off the walls. The Castle formed an important link during the rising with ships calling frequently with men and supplies as they sailed between Inverary in the South and Fort William in the North. After the Battle of Culloden in 1746 the Castle was used by the Government forces as a local centre where the Clansmen had to surrender their arms. Six prisoners are recorded as being held in the Prisoners' Hole for about a fortnight before being taken to Edinburgh for trial.



The last Campbell was born in the Castle in 1775 and Campbells continued to reside in it until about 1800 when they built a new house on the mainland at Airds, which still exists today, and the Castle remained merely as a storehouse. In about 1840 the roof either fell in or was perhaps removed to avoid roof-tax and the Castle was abandoned.

In 1908 the Castle was regained from the Campbells by Charles Stewart of Achara who purchased it and carried out some basic preservation work to stem its decay.

In 1947 his successor, Duncan Stewart, who was Governor of Sarawak, was murdered by a Dyak and the Castle devolved on his widow. In 1965 Lt. Col. D. R. Stewart Allward negotiated terms for the purchase of the Castle and spent the next ten years rebuilding and restoring it as it is today. It is now fully habitable. Contractors and builders in the normal sense were not employed in the restoration which was carried out by Lt. Col. Stewart Allward personally with the help of his wife, family and many friends who were willing to spend holidays and long weekends helping with the task. He died suddenly whilst out walking in 5th February 1991 and is survived by his wife Marion and children Sine, Ross, Alasdair, and Morag.



www.castlestalker.com/castle.htm

[andi]

Dunvegan Castle




Dunvegan Castle is located 22 miles west of Portree on the Isle of Skye.

The Building:
The massive exterior combines six separate buildings, of which you can visit five. The sixth building and the upper floors comprise the administrative and domestic offices of the present Chief and his family.

The castle is situated on an upstanding mass of partly columnar basalt approximately 30 feet in height arising from the shores of Loch Dunvegan. Around it originally the sea ebbed and flowed. Now after centuries of natural deposits of silt, and assisted by the modern needs of supplying an entrance from the land, the sea has receded from that side of the Castle.

The top of the Rock is more-or-less level and forms a roughly oval platform indented on the North-west sector, the long access lying North-west and South-east. This platform measures about 175 feet in length and 110 feet in it's greatest breadth.

The Rock descends all round fairly vertically to the short scree slopes that blanket its base, except in the indent on its North-western quarter, where there is a kind of 'slack' in the cliff, up which a doubly-curved flight of rough stone steps mounts to the Sea-gate. Before the opening of the first landward door in 1748, this was the only entrance to the Castle, and very likely from remotest times there has been an access to the summit of the Rock at this point.

Another important feature which gave Dunvegan Castle and those within its great strength, was the existence of a fresh water well. With this priceless resource added to the impregnability of its position, Dunvegan Castle presented a forbidding obstacle to the enemies of the Chiefs of MacLeod.

Today the Castle has a unified design with Victorian dummy pepper-pots and defensive battlements running the whole length of the roof line. This 'romantic restoration' was carried out by the 25th Chief between 1840 and 1850 to the plans of Robert Brown of Edinburgh at a total cost of £8,000. Underneath this outer skin however there remains a series of complete buildings, each of a different date.

This is why Dunvegan Castle is regarded and held in such high esteem as one of the most important historic castles in Scotland.

As it represents an unbroken line of occupancy over 850 years and throughout this time the building has evolved naturally as the requirement and usage of each generation has manifested itself in the castle changing architecturaly to meet those requirements.




www.dunvegancastle.com

[Elly]

thanks Andi, very interesting, imagine taking on the renovations of a castle on your own, must have been a daunting task, bad enough doing a house. Castle Stalker has certainly had some history within its walls.

[andi]

Very true. A whole lot of work it is indeed!

[andi]

Stuart Castle

This castle is located just a couple of miles outside of Inverness just off the A96 road to Nairn on the east coast of Scotland.



Castle Stuart became a derelict ruin for almost 300 years. It remained empty - except for the ghosts.

When Mary Queen of Scots came back to Scotland in 1561, after the death of her husband, the Dauphin of France, she gave this land to her half-brother, James Stuart, granted him the title 'Earl of Moray' and he ruled Scotland as Regent for her. Unfortunately he was murdered and the 2nd Earl of Moray was also murdered - stabbed to death 13 times. Thus Castle Stuart was finally completed in 1625 by James Stuart, 3rd Earl of Moray.

He married Anne Gordon - it was her father, the Earl of Huntly - who stabbed to death his father, the 2nd Earl of Moray. We think he built the castle for protection from his in-laws.

No sooner was the castle built than it was attacked by 500 MacIntoshes who came down the drive and took over the castle. The Stuart family decided the best thing to do would be to pay off the MacIntoshes - they took the money and ran.

Some 20 years later, with the power of Oliver Cromwell in England gaining strength, the cultured and melancholy Stuart king, Charles the First, died beneath the headsman's axe outside his own London Palace of Whitehall. Castle Stuart suffered, fell into decline and gradually became a derelict ruin for almost 300 years. It remained empty - except for the ghosts.

Throughout centuries of Scotland's troubled history, Castle Stuart has stood a strong refuge and retreat for the Earls of Moray and the Stuart family. Within sight of this great house on high Culloden Moor, the Highland Broadsword rose and fell in the last futile attempt to restore the exiled Stuart kings to the British throne.

Charles Edward Stuart, the romantic 'might have been' of British history, shared with the Lords of Castle Stuart a proud descent from the Royal House of Albany, rulers of Scotland and, for a time, of the United Kingdom. The Stuarts and their kin wrote much of the bloody and poetic history that is Scotland's heritage.



www.castlestuart.com/history.htm

[andi]

Carbisdale Castle



The Castle was built between 1906 and 1917 for the Dowager Duchess of Sutherland, a lady with a rather colourful history...

Mary Caroline Mitchell, the daughter of Rev. Richard Mitchell, Principal of Hertford College, Oxford, was first married to Captain Arthur Kindersely Blair of the 71st Highland Light Infantry. He was shot and died from his wounds in a hunting accident near Pitlochry in 1883. Her second marriage in 1889, was to George Granville William Sutherland Levenson-Gower, 3rd Duke and 18th Earl of Sutherland, making her the Duchess.

She became known as the "Duchess Blair". This marriage was very unpopular with the Sutherland family, so much so that when the Duke died in 1892 his will,which was made almost totally in favour of Duchess Blair, was contested by his son and heir. In the ensuing legal proceedings the Duchess was found guilty of contempt of court for destroying documents and was imprisoned for six weeks in Holloway Prison, London.

An agreement was finally reached giving her a substantial financial settlement. In addition the Sutherland family agreed to build a residence befitting her station, at their expense and to her specifications, provided that it was outside the Sutherland lands. Duchess Blair employed a firm of Ayrshire builders to construct the castle just over the county boundary in neighbouring Ross-shire. Work started in 1906 but the castle was not finally completed until 1917.

Duchess Blair's third marriage was to a London Member of Parliament Sir Albert Kay Rollit. (South Islington).

In 1933, the castle was bought by Colonel Theodore Salvesen, the wealthy Scottish businessman of Norwegian extraction and head of the Christian Salvesen shipping and whaling company of Leith. Several generations had established the Salvesens as a family of distinction, with diplomatic and military honours.

Through Colonel Salvesen's consular connections he provided King Haakon VII of Norway and Crown Prince Olav (later King Olav V) with a safe refuge at Carbisdale during the Nazi occupation of Norway during World War II, and during that time the castle was the venue of an important meeting.

After Germany attacked Russia on 22nd June, 1941, King Haakon presided at the "Carbisdale Conference" which led to an agreement by the Allies which ensured that Russian forces, should they enter Norwegian territory, would not remain there after the war.

Present at the conference were King Haakon VII, Crown Prince Olav, the Norwegian Chiefs of Staff including the Commander in Chief General Carl Fleischer, the British General Thorne, Col. Sir John Aird and Col. Salvesen.

The Red Army entered Norway on 25th October 1944, in pursuit of the German 28th (Lapland) Army and captured thirty towns including Kirkenes, but later withdrew in terms of the agreement.

After Col. Salvesen's death his son Captain Harold Salvesen inherited the castle and in 1945 he gifted the castle, its contents and the estate to the Scottish Youth Hostels Association. Carbisdale Castle Youth Hostel opened to members on 2nd June 1945.


statue gallery




www.carbisdale.org/pages/history.htm

[Elly]

Thanks Andi, very interesting, haven`t heard of Carbisdale before.

[annabelle]

I am enjoying the reading about all of the castles. I will be going over in the spring of next year so you are helping me add to my list of places to photograph! Keep the work up gals I am really enjoying the education...
In all things scottish since I arrrrr!
Annabelle

[andi]

admin said:

Thanks Andi, very interesting, haven`t heard of Carbisdale before.

It's a wonderful place, stayed there for two days my first time in scotland.