Dalquharran Castle
- almost 6 years ago
- 91 VŪZ
4 - 3
- Report
While Culzean Castle is celebrated as one of Scotland's architectural gems, even featuring on a Scottish £5 note, Robert Adam's other Ayrshire masterpiece is relatively unknown. Dalquharran Castle was also built as a castle style mansion, commissioned by Thomas Kennedy of Dunure who was married to the niece of Robert Adam. Work began in 1785 and incorporated some similar features to nearby Culzean which Adam was still working on at the time. Like Culzean, Dalquharran was designed as a family home and stayed in possession of the Kennedy family until the 1930s when it was put up for auction. Bought by a Timber Merchant from Troon who subsequently leased it to the Scottish Youth Hostel Association, it was later occupied by the Langside School for the Deaf during WWII which had been evacuated from Glasgow and finally sold to John Stewart, a Produce Merchant from Girvan. Perhaps not surprisingly, he found that the building was too expensive to maintain and under his ownership the current fate of Dalquharran was sealed. In order to avoid paying rates on the building, the lead roof was removed in 1967 so the structure would be classed as uninhabitable. Open to the elements, the interior gradually began to erode and collapse and today the building is pretty much a shell with just a few recognisable interior features remaining. It was classed as a listed building in 1971 and over the years there have been various plans to redevelop it into a hotel, however for one reason or another the plans have never progressed and Dalquharran Castle still lies abandoned, overgrown and forgotten.Although similarities with Culzean can still be seen on the facade, it takes a lot of imagination to envisage how grand the interior might once have been. Faded shutters creak in the wind, fireplaces and empty doorways set high in the walls are the only clues left as to where the upper floors of the castle were once located and large chunks of the once impressive grand spiral staircase now lie in broken pieces. While visitors flock to Culzean, I find it sad that Dalquharran lies just 8 miles away and few people even know of its existence. The two castles may have been conceived by the same hand and started off on a very similar journey but they have ended up at very different destinations.