Castle of Mey

On the Caithness shore of the Pentland Firth, looking across to Orkney, the Castle of Mey was built by George Sinclair, 4th Earl of Caithness, in about 1566-72, renamed Barrogill, and bought as a wreck in 1952 by Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, who restored it in two years and kept it for fifty. It is famous for a Green Lady: a girl said to have been locked up by her father for loving beneath her and to have thrown herself from a tower. The room is real and old — a visitor in 1840 listed 'a haunted apartment' among the castle's contents, without a ghost, a name or a story. The name attached to it much later, and wrongly. Lady Fanny Sinclair existed and did die here, but she was the daughter of the 14th Earl, she was twenty-nine, the year was 1883, and the family genealogy records that she died 'after a very short illness' and lies in the churchyard at Canisbay. The folklorist who first printed the legend, in 1961, said in the same breath that the identification was a historians' mix-up.

The Castle of Mey sits on the Caithness shore of the Pentland Firth, six miles west of John o' Groats, looking across to Orkney. Historic Environment Scotland dates the fabric to about 1566-72 and lists it Category A (LB1797, designated 13 April 1971) as 'Castle of Mey and Garden Walls': a three-storey centre block with a five-storey square tower at the south-east corner and a two-storey dining-room wing. It was built by George Sinclair, 4th Earl of Caithness. James Traill Calder, writing his 'Sketch of the Civil and Traditional History of Caithness' in 1861, noticed the evidence still fixed to the building and set it down in a footnote: a wood carving bearing the initials G.S. and E.G., one supporter a crane and the other a griffin, the mottoes 'Commit thy wish to God' and 'Ne oubhe' (Don't forget), and the arms of Montrose impaled with those of Caithness — the marriage, as Calder read it, of the 4th Earl and his Countess, Elizabeth Graham, daughter of William, Earl of Montrose. What happened next is told slightly differently by the two authorities. The Queen Elizabeth Castle of Mey Trust says the castle was built for the Earl's second son, William Sinclair, who in 1573 was murdered at the family seat of Girnigoe by his elder brother John — John had been imprisoned there some six years by their father and was planning an escape; William found out and told him. John was killed in turn, and the castle went to the third son, George, who founded the Sinclairs of Mey. Historic Environment Scotland's list entry compresses this and says the castle 'passed to his 2nd son, William, who founded the line of Sinclair of Mey'. The Trust adds that it was a descendant of that line, succeeding to the Earldom in 1789, who changed the castle's name to Barrogill. In 1819 the 12th Earl commissioned the architect William Burn to remodel it, adding the grand entrance and the dining room. Twenty-one years later the novelist Catherine Sinclair — a Caithness Sinclair herself, daughter of Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster — arrived on the northern circuit that became 'Shetland and the Shetlanders' (1840), and left the only eyewitness description of Burn's work in use. Barrogill was 'every way suitable for a nobleman of rank', she wrote, 'with all the internal elegance of a house in London, and all the exterior dignity of an ancient Highland residence'. She noted that 'the staircase, which was formerly outside, as high as the drawing-room floor, is now thrown into the house, while several windows have been thrown out, which were greatly wanted', and she listed what the castle contained: 'some first-rate pictures by the best masters, a haunted apartment, abundance of interesting family portraits, and a forest of the very best trees that Caithness can produce.' Off the shore she found 'a celebrated tide... called "The merry men of Mey", very noisy and obstreperous indeed, but no subject of merriment to vessels'. The most conspicuous 19th-century occupant was James Sinclair, 14th Earl of Caithness, an inventor. Calder reports that he built a working steam carriage and drove it north to Barrogill, coming 'from Inverness to Wick, and thence to Barrogill Castle, a distance of some hundred and thirty miles' at seven or eight miles an hour, to be cheered through the burgh of Wick. He is also the father of the real Lady Fanny. Roland William Saint-Clair's genealogy 'The Saint-Clairs of the Isles' (1898) records that the 14th Earl married in 1847 Louisa Georgina, youngest daughter of Sir George Philips of Weston House, and had by her one daughter and one son: 'Lady Fanny Georgina, born in 1854', and George Philips Alexander, Lord Berriedale, born 30 November 1858. Louisa died in 1870; the Earl married secondly, at Edinburgh on 6 March 1872, 'Marie, only surviving daughter of the late Senor Don Jose de Mariategui, and widow of His Excellency Conde de Medina Pomar', by whom there was no issue. The Earl himself died at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York on 28 March 1881 and was brought home embalmed for burial at Holyrood. Of his daughter, Saint-Clair writes in one sentence: 'His sister Lady Fanny died at Barrogill Castle after a very short illness on the 11th October, 1883, greatly lamented. She was interred in the churchyard of Canisbay on the 17th of the same month.' She was twenty-nine. Her brother George, the 15th Earl, died suddenly at the Palace Hotel in Edinburgh on 25 May 1889 at the age of thirty — 'the last male of the senior branch of the Sinclairs of Mey'. The Barony of Barrogill became extinct and, in Saint-Clair's words, 'Barrogill Castle and the estates of the Mey family became estranged from the dignity.' The Trust picks up the thread: the 15th Earl left the castle to his friend F. G. Heathcote on condition that he change his name to Sinclair; Heathcote's widow sold it to Captain F. B. Imbert-Terry, who sold it to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother in 1952. That sale is the castle's second founding, and it happened fast. In 1952 the Queen Mother, newly widowed, was staying with her friends Commander and Lady Doris Vyner at the House of the Northern Gate on Dunnet Head, a few miles west, when she saw what was then Barrogill Castle. Godfrey Talbot's 1978 account adds the detail that decided it: she was told there was a possibility the old castle would be demolished. She bought it that year. Historic Environment Scotland's list entry, written while she still owned it, says 'purchased by H.M. The Queen Mother, c. 1953' — a year adrift from the Trust's date, and worth noting rather than smoothing over. The restoration was not a lifetime's work, whatever is often written. The Trust dates it precisely: the castle, gardens and roughly thirty acres of policies were 'renovated and restored by Her Majesty between 1953 and 1955'. Much of Burn's 1819 Baronial porch was taken off again in the process. Hew Lorimer carved her crest above the first-floor dining-room window on the west side in about 1954. She restored the castle's original name, Barrogill becoming the Castle of Mey once more, and in 1958 bought the neighbouring Longoe Farm. For the next forty-odd years she came for three weeks each August and about ten days each October, and opened the gardens three days a year for Scotland's Gardens Scheme — a tradition the trustees still keep. She made the arrangements for afterwards herself. The Queen Elizabeth Castle of Mey Trust was constituted by a Deed of Trust executed on 11 June 1996 (Scottish charity SC024983). Her last visit was in October 2001; she died in March 2002, and the castle opened to the public that year. Since 1 January 2019 the sole trustee has been The King's Foundation.

The Castle and Gardens of Mey are open Wednesday to Sunday, 1 May to 30 September 2026, and closed completely from 24 July to 11 August inclusive — the weeks when the family is in residence. Check before travelling, because these dates move: they are the Trust's published 2026 season, read on 11 August 2026. The castle itself opens from 11.00 with last admission at 15.00, and the visit takes in the Front Hall, Library, Equerry's Room, Drawing Room, Dining Room, Butler's Pantry and Kitchen. The gardens, grounds, Animal Centre, tearoom and shop run from 10.30 to 16.00. Tickets are sold on the day in the gift shop; there is no advance booking for general admission. Under the 'Summer Saver' pricing that applies from 25 June to 1 September, castle, grounds and gardens cost £16.01 for an adult, £12.68 concession, £8.18 child and £41.86 for a family ticket; grounds and gardens only are £10.00 adult, £5.46 child, £25.46 family. Concessions are for over-60s and students with ID, a child is 5-16 inclusive, and a family ticket covers two adults and up to four children. The visitor centre is cashless — contactless and card only, no cash at all. Getting there: from the east, follow the A99 from Wick to John o' Groats, then turn onto the A836 for six miles. From the west, the A836 from Thurso runs fourteen miles along the coast. The nearest railway stations are Thurso, about fourteen miles away, and Wick, about twenty-three; from either you will need a bus or a car, with bus services run by Stagecoach. There is free parking in front of the visitor centre, with disabled spaces near the entrance and marked bays for coaches, campervans and motorbikes. The Trust notes that from the top of the drive it is a flat fifteen to twenty minute walk down to the castle. Coach and group visits must be arranged in advance by email or on 01847 851473. Spanish speakers are looked after: the castle information sheet is available in translation in Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Russian and Spanish. There is level wheelchair access to the tearoom, shop and toilets. Dogs on leads are welcome in the grounds but not in the castle, the Animal Centre or the walled garden, guide dogs excepted. Two things not to expect. There is no ghost tour, no Green Lady room on the route and nothing about the haunting in the castle's own visitor information; if you want the legend from the house itself, buy the guidebook in the shop, where page 88 tells it properly. And Lady Fanny is not here — she is six miles east, in the churchyard at Canisbay, under a stone bearing the initial 'S'.