Scotland · Restored
Ballone Castle
Ballone Castle is a compact stone tower house sited close to the shoreline, accompanied by lower service buildings. The standing structure presents a tall rectangular keep with a small corner turret and attached outbuildings clustered to one side, set above open farmland with water immediately behind.
Its prime
1600
Today
Restored
As it stood in 1600
What Ballone Castle looked like in its prime.
A square, multi-storey stone tower with small, regularly spaced slit and rectangular windows and a single round corner turret; the main block has steeply pitched slate roofs and substantial chimneys. A range of lower stone outbuildings with pitched roofs adjoin one side. The walls appear harled or pale stone, with a simple, uncrenellated parapet line. The castle sits on low coastal ground immediately before a broad tidal bay, approached across open cultivated fields.
Its story
The story of Ballone Castle.
Ballone Castle, also known as Tarbat Castle, was built in the 16th century north of Rockfield on the east coast of the parish of Tarbat. It is a Z-plan castle, unusual in pairing a square tower on the southwest with a circular drum-tower on the northeast, and was reputedly built by the Earls of Ross.
The castle came into the possession of the family of Viscount Tarbat and the Earl of Cromartie; John Mackenzie, created baronet of Tarbat in the County of Ross in 1628, died there in 1654. After the Tarbat family moved south to Tarbat House, Ballone fell into ruin, abandoned in the late 18th century.
The Stewarts purchased the property from a local farmer in 1990, and the castle was restored by an architect as a private house, a tall rectangular keep with corner turret and clustered outbuildings, close above the shore.
Step inside
6 places to explore in 1600.
The record describes 6 distinct spots at Ballone Castle, including the full exterior approach. Create your own photoreal reconstruction and explore every one, more scenes means more rooms, more angles, and more of the place to stand in.
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Clans who held Ballone Castle.
The families that held Ballone Castle for a decade or more across its history, follow a name to its clan.
Held by the Mackenzie family of Viscount Tarbat and the Earl of Cromartie; Sir John Mackenzie, baronet of Tarbat from 1628, died here in 1654.
From the archive
Ballone Castle on paper: the measured plan and period views.
The survey plan and photographs below are the ground truth this page's reconstructions are checked against, drawn and photographed while the castle was still a working garrison. Every image is public-domain or openly licensed, with its source named.
Fig. 703. — Ballone Castle. View from the South-West.
1887 · MacGibbon & Ross, vol. 2 (1887)
Public domain
Fig. 704. — Ballone Castle. View from the North-East.
1887 · MacGibbon & Ross, vol. 2 (1887)
Public domain
Fig. 705. — Ballone Castle. Plans.
1887 · MacGibbon & Ross, vol. 2 (1887)
Public domain
