ABANDONED CASTLE
WITH HISTORY
IN SCOTLAND
G'day folks,
Yep, here is another abandoned structure. This one is in Scotland.
She’s been asleep for
over half a century. Cocooned by a forest, half swallowed by
nature’s encroaching fingers. A forgotten castle in the Scottish
Highlands, waiting for its story to continue or find an ending. Such
places do exist, you just have to be curious enough to find them.
So you want to know where it is. Locals
in Stirlingshire, Scotland know her as Buchanan Castle. She’s the
elephant in the room in their quaint country village.
Built in 1852, the castle was commissioned by James
Graham, 4th Duke of Montrose and it became the home for the Montrose
family, and remained as such until the 1920s. James’ father was the 3rd Duke of
Montrose, the man responsible for the persuading Parliament to remove the law
forbidding Scots to wear tartan and the traditional highland dress. It remains
the seat of the Clan Graham to this day.
The Montrose family owned the castle until 1925 when it was
sold and opened as a hotel in the 1930s with a golf course. The outbreak of
World War II delayed further plans for residential development on the estate,
at which time the house was requisitioned as a hospital.
Rudolf Hess, a prominent politician
in Nazi Germany, appointed Deputy Führer to Adolf
Hitler in 1933, was a patient at the Buchanan castle’s makeshift hospital
in 1941 after he flew solo to Scotland in an attempt to negotiate peace
with the United Kingdom. He crash landed his plane, injuring his foot and was
taken prisoner, convicted of crimes against
peace. He was sentenced to serve a life sentence until his death by suicide.
Hitler had ordered the German press to characterise Hess as a madman gone rogue
when he realised the blundered mission might leave his allies, Italy and
Japan, suspicious that the Führer was trying to secretly open peace
negotiations with the British.
After the war, the building served briefly as the Army
School of Education and in 1954 the roof was removed from the house and
outlying parts of the building were demolished. Removing the roof of a house
would deem a property uninhabitable by the government and avoid the burden
of taxes on a house that was no longer wanted. A number of residential buildings
were subsequently built in the castle gardens and grounds.
As recently as 2002 and 2004, redevelopment proposals were
put forward for the category B listed building to be restored and
turned into residential flats, but those plans were refused. The
castle is currently included on the Buildings at Risk Register for Scotland.
Clancy's comment: Wow. Yet, another deserted property, eh? What a waste.
I'm ...
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