Buchanan Castle

Buchanan Castle is a large house in Stirlingshire, Scotland, and serves today as the seat of the Clan Graham.

Located west of the village of Drymen, the house was built by the 4th Duke of Montrose in 1854. The original structure, the ancestral seat of the Clan Buchanan, had burned down in 1852, and Montrose commissioned William Burn to replace it. Burn designed an extravagant manor in the Scottish baronial style, enclosing an L-plan tower in a clutch of turrets, bartizans and stepped gables. This new house would replace Mugdock Castle as the official seat of the Clan Graham.

Sold off in 1925, it briefly saw service as a hospital during the Second World War, during which one of the patients was Rudolf Hess. Afterwards it was de-roofed to avoid paying rates on the building, leading to the inevitable structural deterioration.

Today it remains standing to full height but progressively engulfed by trees and plants, marooned on the perimeter of a golf course after which it is named, and surrounded incongruously by modern housing. A perimeter fence surrounds the structure itself.

There have been several attempts to turn the Castle into a hotel but these have all failed due to the castle being protected by The National Trust of Scotland as a historical site, it is also on the list as one of many historical sites that need restoration.

Ironically no Buchanan ever lived in this house, as it was built and occupied by the Duke of Montrose, a Graham title.

External links

* [http://www15.pair.com/buchanan/clancast.htm Clan Buchanan - Buchanan Castle]