I Captured the Castles

by Neil Matthews

Note: Since the original publication of this article, Torosay Castle has changed hands and it is currently closed to the public. A pity, as the tea room served the most delicious simnel cake!

Above the main entrance is a tiger’s head, with a dozen deer’s heads either side of it on the walls, and additional antlers above each deer’s head. A note explains that the tiger was “Shot by my grandmother in India in 1922.” Adding to the surreal atmosphere is the strong smell of potted hyacinths.

Torosay Castle Gardens

Torosay Castle, on the east coast of Mull, is not a castle at all. It’s a Victorian mansion built in Scottish Baronial style, completed in 1858. The Guthries, the family who own it, have had many political connections. The family tree is displayed with the caption: “Being an MP seems to be a hereditary complaint.” In the library there is a portrait of Pamela Harriman – Winston Churchill’s daughter-in-law, President Clinton’s Ambassador to France and the aunt of the current Laird of Torosay, Chris James. This is not just a visitor attraction but a family home. The library houses some reference books such as the Dictionary of National Biography, the Statistical Accounts of Scotland 1791-9 and various ornithology works, but there is also literature such as A Passage to India and the Waverley novels. A sense of self-parodic humour is in evidence from the presence of Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle.

The Castle’s hospitality is not what you might expect if you’re used to National Trust properties. There are no personal guides, not even in the car park where an NT property can boast an army of pensioners signalling to you every 20 yards. “Please sit down if you wish,” reads a notice in the Central Hall. If you have musical talents, you can try your hand on the Steinway grand piano in the living room.

In the dining room, you can study the fossilised head of an ancient Irish elk above the fireplace. One room is dedicated to displays of the Finnish four-masted barque Viking in which Chris James’s father David Guthrie James sailed round the world in 1937-8. David’s eventful life – including escape from a PoW camp in World War II, polar expeditions and time as a Conservative MP – was featured on This is Your Life in 1962. You can flick through the red book used by Eamonn Andrews for that broadcast, and other scrapbooks which give a glimpse into local life over the past 50 years.

The Castle is set in Italianate gardens, with statues imported from Padua; my favourite was the hunting dog delivering its prey to its master. Also on the estate there’s a farm, with highland cattle, cheviot and blackface sheep, and there are two holiday cottages available to let. If you’re a train buff, you can get to Torosay by 260mm gauge railway from Craignure, with views of Ben Nevis on the way.

Aros Castle 

Torosay is one of three contrasting castles along the east coast. Aros Castle, near Salen, was once the administrative centre of Mull. The castle was probably built by the MacDougalls of Lorn. For 230 years from the defeat of King Haakon of Norway at the battle of Largs in 1263 the Western Isles and seaboard were to form a semi-autonomous state within the kingdom of Scotland, the Lordship of the Isles. The castle dates from the 13th century, which is why it is likely to have been built by the MacDougalls, but by the next century it had passed into Macdonald hands and during the Lordship it was a residence and seat of government of the dominant clan. After the ending of the Lordship (the estates and titles of the Lords of the Isles were forfeited to the Scottish crown in 1493) the castle fell to the MacLeans, who in turn were ousted by the clan Campbell. Now Aros perches silent on a small headland, its one main surviving wall overlooking sheer drops down to the Sound of Mull. A few seagulls, and a small boy on a red bike, were our only fellow visitors.

Duart Castle

The third castle is Duart, which dates back to the 14th century. It is the historic base of the Maclean clan. The first recorded mention of the Macleans of Duart is in a papal dispensation of 1367 which allowed their Chief Lachlan Lubanach Maclean to marry the daughter of the Lord of the Isles, Mary Macdonald. The match is supposed to have been one of true love – though Lachlan helped to persuade Mary’s father of his intent, by kidnapping him. This incident seems typical of the chequered history of the castle, involving battles for various causes, captures and recaptures and, in the 18th and 19th centuries, ruin.

The Maclean family history says that Sir Fitzroy Maclean (b.1835), who was brought up in Gibraltar and Malta while his father served with his regiment, saw Duart on a family holiday in the 1870s and decided there and then to buy and restore the castle. So he did. It’s not that simple, of course – restoration work continues today. But you can see an Edwardian kitchen and pantry; dungeons where officers of a Spanish Armada galleon were imprisoned; and an exhibition on the Clan Maclean at the top of the keep.

First published in VISA 85 (Jun 2009)