Castle of Mey

The lands of Mey belonged to the bishops of Caithness. The building that survives was probably raised between 1566 and 1572 by George Sinclair, 4th Earl of Caithness, possibly over an earlier fortification — a dominating tower with tall ranges to the side and rear, making a three-sided courtyard left open to the north and the sea. In its first form it was a Z-plan tower house of three storeys with a wing projecting at the south-east and a square tower at the north-west, set on the north Caithness coast about ten kilometres west of John o' Groats, with a view to Orkney in fine weather.

The earl passed the castle to his younger son William, founder of the Sinclairs of Mey, though it later became the seat of the earls of Caithness themselves.

The castle was renamed Barrogill and enlarged more than once in the 17th and 18th centuries, then altered again in 1821 in Tudor Gothic style to designs by William Burn. It left Sinclair hands in 1889 on the death of the 15th Earl of Caithness, passing to F. G. Heathcote, who later took the name Sinclair, and in 1929 it was bought by Captain Frederic Bouhier Imbert-Terry.

During the Second World War Barrogill served as a rest home for officers. The estate farms were sold off in 1950, and by that time only the tower was fit to live in.

Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother bought the estate in 1952, the year her husband George VI died, when the castle stood semi-derelict. She set about restoring it as a holiday home, took off some of the 19th-century additions and reinstated the original name. Electricity and water were laid on for the first time; the work of 1953 and 1954 made the building weathertight and habitable, with plastering and painting, and the interior was refurbished over the years that followed, though the west wing was not finished until 1960. The castle was listed category A on 13 April 1971.

She hung portraits of the earls of Caithness, the castle's earlier owners, through its rooms, and came north regularly in August and October from 1955 until her death in March 2002. Her last visit was in October 2001.

A deed of trust executed on 11 June 1996 created the Queen Elizabeth Castle of Mey Trust, and in July that year she made over the castle, its policies and the farm to it. The trust was charged with securing the future of the building, advancing historical and architectural education, developing the native Aberdeen Angus and Cheviot breeds, and undertaking projects for the benefit of the local community; its president was the then Prince of Wales. From 2002 it opened the castle for five months each summer to raise the revenue that sustains the property, added a visitor centre in early 2007, and recorded nearly 30,000 visits in 2018 — the year the roof was repaired, the interior rewired and the walls lime-harled.

On 1 January 2019 stewardship passed to the Prince's Foundation, whose president, the then Prince of Wales, became the trust's sole trustee. In early May 2019 the former stables and granary opened as Granary Lodge, a ten-bedroom bed and breakfast built where possible with local materials and craftsmen, its profits going back into the estate. The castle closes to visitors for ten days at the turn of July and August, when the King and Queen usually stay at Mey.