Carbisdale Castle

Carbisdale Castle sits on a crag above the Kyle of Sutherland, and the crag is a battlefield. On 27 April 1650 the Marquis of Montrose lost his last fight on the plain below it, an ambush that ended with some 200 men drowned in the river and Montrose himself on the gallows in Edinburgh less than a month later. The castle came 256 years afterwards: built between 1906 and 1917 for Mary Caroline, Dowager Duchess of Sutherland, after a savage inheritance fight with her stepson, and sited in full view of the road and railway her in-laws used. Its clock tower has faces on only three sides. Later it sheltered King Haakon VII of Norway in wartime, then spent sixty-six years as a youth hostel before frost damage closed it in 2011. The ghost stories are attributable and datable: a piper heard before the castle existed, a white lady seen by a gardener, a corridor apparition dressed for a battle fought two and a half centuries before the corridor was built.

The hill came first, and it came with a body count. On Saturday 27 April 1650 James Graham, 1st Marquis of Montrose, fought his last battle on the flood plain below the crag where Carbisdale Castle now stands. Historic Environment Scotland's Inventory of Historic Battlefields, which designated the site as BTL19 on 30 November 2011, draws its boundary so as to take in "the craggy peak which accommodates Carbisdale Castle" and the low pass between that crag and the river, down which Montrose brought his army onto the plain. Montrose had come back from exile as Charles II's Lieutenant-Governor of Scotland with a force raised largely in Orkney: a core of Danish professionals stiffening a body of Orcadian levies, at most around 1,500 men. Colonel Archibald Strachan, commanding for the Covenanter government, had some 200 to 230 cavalry, 36 musketeers of Lawers' regiment, and about 400 Monro and Ross clansmen whose commitment, by several of the sources HES cites, was decided only once they saw which way the fighting was going. Strachan hid the bulk of his horse in the broom and showed a single troop as bait. The ruse worked. When the concealed cavalry charged, the Royalist withdrawal towards the woods turned into a rout; Montrose's Danes managed a single volley. The killing in the wood went on for two hours, around 200 men drowned trying to cross the Kyle of Sutherland, and roughly 400 were taken prisoner. The Covenanters lost one trooper, drowned in the pursuit. Montrose escaped the field, wandered for several days, was handed over at Ardvreck and was hanged in Edinburgh on 21 May 1650. His head was fixed on a spike on the Tolbooth and his limbs sent to Stirling, Glasgow, Perth and Aberdeen; his remains were gathered up again and buried in St Giles' in May 1661. Sir John Hurry, who had led his vanguard, was executed on 29 May 1650. The hill above the field is Creag a' Choineachan, commonly translated as Lamentation Hill. Nothing of consequence stood on that crag for the next two and a half centuries. Then came the Duchess. Mary Caroline Michell, born in Oxford in 1848, first married Captain Arthur Kindersley Blair of the 71st Highland Light Infantry, who died of his wounds in a shooting accident near Pitlochry in 1883. In 1889 she married George Granville William Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, 3rd Duke and 18th Earl of Sutherland — a marriage his family detested, and which left her known to her contemporaries as "Duchess Blair". When the Duke died in 1892 leaving his will almost wholly in her favour, his heir contested it; in the proceedings she was found guilty of destroying documents and served six weeks in Holloway Prison in London. The settlement that finally ended the fight obliged the Sutherlands to build her a residence at their own expense and to her own specification, on one condition: it had to stand outside Sutherland land. She chose a hillside in Ross-shire, just over the county boundary, in full view of the road and the railway the family used to travel south. Work began in 1906 and was not finished until 1917. Historic Environment Scotland attributes the design "probably" to John Robertson of Inverness and records that the castle was built on the site of — and possibly incorporating — the former Culrain Lodge. The castle and its entrance gates are listed at category B (LB7165, listed on 18 March 1971): a large Baronial mansion of bullfaced grey rubble with polished sandstone dressings, a porte cochere on the north front, three canted bays on the terraced south front, and a high square clock tower at the north-west angle. That clock tower carries the detail everybody repeats: it has faces on three sides, not four. The Gazetteer for Scotland says the blank side is the one the new Duke could see as he passed on the railway to Dunrobin, and that he in turn had the blinds on that side of his private carriage drawn as he went by. What is beyond dispute is that the Duchess never saw the house finished. Denis Stuart's biography of her successor as Duchess of Sutherland records that Carbisdale "was still unfinished when 'Duchess Blair' died, aged 63, on 25th May 1912", and MacGregor adds that work on the castle was suspended for a year after her death. It was completed five years later, in 1917, for nobody in particular. In 1933 the castle was bought by Colonel Theodore Salvesen, head of the Christian Salvesen shipping and whaling firm of Leith and a Scot of Norwegian descent. During the German occupation of Norway he made Carbisdale available as a refuge to King Haakon VII and Crown Prince Olav, later Olav V. The history page that the hostel itself published states that on 22 June 1941 the castle hosted the "Carbisdale Conference", at which it was agreed that Soviet forces entering Norwegian territory would not remain there after the war; the Red Army did enter Norway on 25 October 1944 and later withdrew. The Colonel's son, Captain Harold Salvesen, gave the castle, its contents and the estate to the Scottish Youth Hostels Association. Carbisdale Castle Youth Hostel opened to members on 2 June 1945 and ran for sixty-six years — about 1.5 million guests, on the SYHA's own count — until frost damage closed it in February 2011.

Do not travel expecting to get in. Carbisdale Castle is private property and has not been open to the general public for years. The youth hostel closed in February 2011 after frost damage; further structural problems were found during the repairs, the SYHA said publicly in March 2013 that it would not reopen, the sculpture and picture collection was auctioned in 2015, and the building was sold in 2016. It has changed hands since. In October 2022 it was bought by the barrister Samantha Kane, who restored parts of it and used it as a residence. As of 11 August 2026 the picture at the castle is unsettled, and the UK company register is the clearest public record of it. Lady Carbisdale Limited (SC783852), registered at Carbisdale Castle and with Samantha Kane as sole director, was incorporated on 26 September 2023 as Carbisdale Castle Ltd and renamed on 30 July 2026; its stated activity is "museums activities". Carbisdale Castle & Forest Preservation Board CIC (SC841102), incorporated at the castle on 13 March 2025 for the operation of historic sites and visitor attractions, is shown as active but with a proposal to strike it off and an overdue confirmation statement. A third company, Carbisdale Castle Estates Ltd (SC894073), was incorporated at the same address on 25 June 2026, with two United States-resident directors and "other letting and operating of own or leased real estate" as its business. The castle's own website, carbisdalecastle.com, which until early 2026 advertised stays, a whisky bar, corporate events and filming, currently shows nothing but a holding message. Two other Carbisdale domains are parked and carry no information about the castle. Check directly before making any plan that depends on getting inside. The battlefield, on the other hand, is public ground and free. The action was fought on the flood plain around and south of the village of Culrain, in the Highland council area; the designated centre point is NGR NH 57307 94431, and the castle stands at NH 57448 95457. Culrain has its own station on ScotRail's Far North Line, 61 miles from Inverness between Ardgay and Invershin: one platform, step-free access, a shelter and a help point, no ticket machine — buy in advance or from the guard. Since 20 December 2022 it works as a "Press & Ride" request stop, with a button on the platform instead of flagging the train down. There are around four trains a day each way from Monday to Saturday. Bonar Bridge and Ardgay are a few kilometres to the south-east by road. Walk the plain south of the village and you are on the ground where Strachan sprang the ambush; the wooded slope to the north-west is the "Scroggie Wood" into which the Royalists fled, and the crag above is Creag a' Choineachan, Lamentation Hill. The possible earthwork identified during the Inventory survey — an arrowhead-shaped feature HES reads as a ravelin in front of Montrose's camp — lies in a field near the village hall, on private farmland: look from the road, do not enter, and do not dig or metal-detect on a designated battlefield. The best free view of the castle itself is the classic one, from the railway and from across the Kyle of Sutherland, which is exactly what the Duchess intended.