Golspie

Dunrobin Castle

A beautiful spot for infamous deeds. One might think the name descriptive but the “o” is long as in roam and, depending on the account, takes its name, “the fortress of Robert” either from Robert the 2nd Earl, in the 13th Century or the 6th at the start of the 15th. The square keep, the original part of the castle, dates from around 1275 and the L-plan extensions are from the late 17th century. The castle was extensively remodelled by Sir Charles Barry, architect of the Houses of Parliament, in the 1830s for the second duke; ‘looking like a French chateau’ and with gardens modelled on Versailles’, if you believe the guidebooks, ‘a Ruritanian castle .... fast becoming a neo-Gothic nightmare’ if you prefer John Prebble’s account. A major fire in 1915 destroyed much of the interior which was refashioned by Sir Robert Lorimer. After a spell as a boys’ school the castle is now open to the public.

In the time of the Clearances it had come (along with most of the rest of Sutherland) to the Marquess of Sutherland as part of the booty in his marriage in 1785 to Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland.

It was to be the scene of a court investigating the rebellion at Kildonan where valuers were chased off the land by those to be cleared from the strath but despite Sellar’s attempted arrests, an angry mob meant proceedings had to be adjourned. It was where the Countess returned, on a, by then, infrequent visit in 1827 having had most of her teeth pulled in London, to receive gifts from factors and ministers‘in the name of the tenantry’, none of whom attended the festivities, and whose contributions had been squeezed from them by factors with ‘menacing looks and an ominous shaking of the head’ to those who would not, or could not, contribute. The Marquess, recently elevated to a dukedom, died here, ironically during the Inverness Sheep Fair, in 1833 and, once again, the ministers and factors forced out their remaining human flocks to ‘mourn’ during the funeral procession.

The eccentric Irishman, Thomas Mulock, editor of the Inverness Advertiser for 18 months before exhaustion (or bribes and threats from the Duke of Sutherland) quieted him, wondered whether the money sent for relief in Sutherland had found its way to the castle,

‘Perhaps the enormous outlay at Dunrobin, without and within that superb pile, may help to explain the mysterious expenditure; .... (the Duke of Sutherland) has a palatial residence at Dunrobin, and he has half a dozen sheep-feeding satraps lording it over his once-peopled but now deserted inheritance, and positively this is all that can be said of the princely possessions of Sutherland’

It featured in the famous rejection, when the then Dike of Sutherland travelled north from London, to raise a second battalion of the 93rd Sutherlanders to fight in the Crimean war. His offer of a large bounty was met with silence and his demand for an explanation was met with,

‘It is the opinion of this county that should the Czar of Russia take possession of Dunrobin Castle .... we couldn’t expect worse treatment at his hands than we have experienced in the hands of your family for the last fifty years .... Though you cannot find men to fight, you can supply those who will fight with plenty of mutton, beef and venison.’

The photographs are from the 1920s.

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