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Castles
in Ayrshire.

It’s 20:06 in Ayrshire.
Ayrshire

Culzean's cliffs and Loch Doon's walls.

Robert Adam built Culzean on the edge of the cliffs, with an oval staircase at its heart and woods and beaches around it. South of Ayr, Greenan's ruined tower stands alone on a crag over the sands. Above Fairlie, Kelburn's old castle is wrapped in a vast mural by Brazilian graffiti artists. In the hills south of Dalmellington, Loch Doon Castle was moved stone by stone from its island to the shore in 1935. Across the water on Arran are the red sandstone castle above Brodick Bay and the ruin on its spit at Lochranza. Wear sturdy shoes, and keep back from the cliff edges.

Loch Doon Castle→
Lochranza Castle→
Kelburn Castle→
Greenan Castle→
Culzean Castle→
Brodick Castle, Garden and Country Park→
Did you know19 hours ago

You can tell who the lords of Lochranza were afraid of by which way the front door faces.

The MacSweens, who probably built the first castle here in the late 1200s, put their main door high up in the seaward wall, reached by a wooden stair or ladder. Everything that could threaten them came up this loch. Three hundred years later, when one of the Montgomerie earls of Eglinton rebuilt the place as a tower house, the entrance was moved: it now faced the land, and it sat at ground level. The sea had stopped being the thing to watch.

See Lochranza Castle · Isle of Arran
From our guide18 hours ago

Loch Doon Castle.

Loch Doon Castle stands on the shore of a long, lonely loch in the hills south of Dalmellington, but it was built somewhere else. The Bruce earls of Carrick raised it in the late 1200s on an island in the loch. It changed hands more than once in the Wars of Independence before the Scots won it back for good in 1314. In 1935, when a hydro scheme raised the water, the castle was taken down stone by stone and rebuilt on the shore. Its rare eleven-sided curtain wall and pointed gateway survive. It is free to visit, and the road up the loch makes a fine drive.

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Did you know17 hours ago

Loch Doon Castle, in Ayrshire, was taken down stone by stone and rebuilt on the mainland in 1935.

The castle once stood on Castle Island in Loch Doon, about 400 metres south of where it stands now, and its unusual polygonal plan came from the shape of that island. When a hydroelectric scheme raised the water, the castle was carefully dismantled, stone by stone, and rebuilt on the mainland in 1935 to save its curtain wall. The portcullis of its main gate is said to lie out in the loch still.

See Loch Doon Castle · Ayrshire
Did you know16 hours ago

In 1839 about 100,000 people came to watch a medieval jousting tournament at Eglinton Castle, near Kilwinning in Ayrshire, and it poured with rain.

Archibald, the 13th Earl of Eglinton, paid for the whole thing after the old medieval banquet was dropped from Queen Victoria's coronation the year before, and borrowed touches from Walter Scott's novel Ivanhoe. He had expected about 4,000 spectators. Among the knights was Prince Louis Napoleon, the future Emperor of the French. On the first day a sudden storm broke just as the parade was ready, the Lugton Water flooded and stranded much of the crowd, and the banquet and ball were called off. The knights jousted again on 30 August, and a bow used at the tournament is still on show in the Kilwinning Abbey Tower museum.

Read about it
Ayrshire15 hours ago

After the Second World War, Culzean Castle kept a flat at the top of the house for General Eisenhower.

Culzean Castle was built between 1777 and 1792 on the cliffs above the Firth of Clyde, near Maybole in Ayrshire. After the Second World War an apartment at the top of the house was given to General Eisenhower. The National Trust for Scotland looks after the castle and the 240 acres of country park around it.

Find out more about Culzean Castle
Did you know13 hours ago

Mary, Queen of Scots stayed three days at Dunure Castle, in Ayrshire.

She came during her third tour of the country.

See Dunure Labyrinth · Ayrshire
From our guide12 hours ago

Kelburn Castle.

Kelburn is the home of the Earl of Glasgow, chief of Clan Boyle, and the Boyles have held these lands since the 1100s. In 2007 the family invited Brazilian graffiti artists to paint the old castle, and the result wraps its turret and gables in giant figures and bold colour. Around it, the glen climbs from the sea past waterfalls and gorges, with views over the Firth of Clyde. There is plenty for children, from animal fields and an indoor playbarn to the Secret Forest in summer. Dogs are welcome, and there is a café for afterwards.

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Did you know11 hours ago

The rare plants around Brodick Castle are there because a duchess bought shares in plant-hunting expeditions.

Lady Mary Louise Hamilton, 6th Duchess of Montrose, began clearing great swathes of the garden in 1923 to make room for something newsworthy. To get hold of rare rhododendrons and azaleas she took shares in the expeditions themselves, among them those of the collectors George Forrest and Frank Kingdon-Ward, and was paid in seed. Arran's mild, wet micro-climate and a shelterbelt planted back in the 1700s do the rest: this is one of the few places in Britain where plants that tender will survive outdoors at all. Three National Collections of rhododendrons grow here now.

See Brodick Castle, Garden and Country Park · Isle of Arran
Castle of the day10 hours ago

Lochranza Castle.

A castle on a spit of land in Loch Ranza, built as a hall-house around 1300 and remade as a tower house in the 1500s.

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In Ayrshire9 hours ago

Baltersan Castle, the 16th-century tower house near Maybole in South Ayrshire, is for sale to someone who will restore it.

John Kennedy of Pennyglen and his wife Margaret Cathcart built it in 1584, and though the roof went long ago its walls still stand to all five floors, with a split-level great hall, an angled oriel window and a secret chamber. It sits on a rise above the Carrick countryside close to Crossraguel Abbey, and its owner has put it up for sale through Galbraith after plans for a music school there found no backing.

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Arran8 hours ago

Lochranza Castle, on Arran, stands on something older and rarer than itself, a hall-house of the 1200s.

Lochranza Castle stands on a peninsula running out into Loch Ranza, at the north end of the Isle of Arran. The tower house dates from the 1500s, but it was raised on something older and rarer, a hall-house of the 1200s. Historic Environment Scotland looks after the ruin.

Find out more about Lochranza Castle
Did you know6 hours ago

Greenan Castle, on a sea cliff south-west of Ayr, stands on an Iron Age fort.

Long before the tower was built, the headland at Greenan, south-west of Ayr, was an Iron Age promontory fort.

See Greenan Castle · Ayrshire