Inveraray Castle is an iconic, privately owned, eighteenth century Highland castle set in spectacular scenery on the west coast of Scotland. It is a well developed tourist destination and the home of Clan Campbell.
Visiting Inveraray Castle
As a privately owned home, Inveraray Castle exploits its Highland heritage to the full. There is the option to rent a cottage on the estate, an excellent cafe, extensive gardens and parkland and a huge car park. The village itself is pretty too with several historic buildings.
My Experience
We visited as part of a week long tour of Scotland that included the Outer Hebrides, detailed in my travel blog here. This was our first trip away with Frey dog so we were limited as to what we could do. We choose to do one of the parkland walks and climbed one of the hills overlooking the castle. As you can see from the photos the scenery was fantastic. The castle is really not my sort of thing, being an eighteenth century stylised recreation rather than a proper fortification.
Inveraray Castle Photo Gallery
History
The present castle was built in the Gothic Revival style. Work on it began in 1743. This castle replaced an earlier 15th-century castle. The foundation stone was laid in October 1746. These dates makes it one of the earliest Gothic Revival buildings, together with Strawberry Hill House. Originally, all the roofs were flat and crenellated. Later, a third floor with pitched roof and dormer windows was added on all four wings and steep conical roofs were added on top of the four round towers. The village of Inveraray was moved in the 1770s to give the castle a more secluded setting.
Designers who worked on the house include William Adam and Roger Morris; the interior includes a number of neoclassical rooms created for the 5th Duke by Robert Mylne. These are among the rooms open to the public. James Lees-Milne was not impressed by the house when he visited it in 1943, noting the “ugly” grey stone and calling it “grim and forbidding”.
In 1975 a devastating fire struck Inveraray and for some time the 12th Duke and his family lived in the castle’s basement, while restorations requiring a worldwide fundraising drive were carried out.
References
The castle website, with full visitor information plus Clan Campbell research assets, is here.
The history above is copied from the Wikipedia entry here.
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