Dundas Castle

The name comes from the Gaelic dùn deas, read as "south hill" or "pretty hill". In the 11th century Malcolm Canmore granted the lands of Dundas, along with other land in Lothian, to his paternal first cousin Gospatrick, earl of Northumbria, who had come north to escape William the Conqueror. They passed to Gospatrick's great-grandson Waldeve, who granted them to his kinsman Helias in a charter of around 1180. Helias took his surname from the lands and became the first of the Dundas family, whose descendants and cadet branches came to hold much of Mid and West Lothian.

In 1416 James Dundas obtained a licence from the Duke of Albany, then the effective ruler of Scotland, to build a keep, and in 1436 it was extended onto an L-plan. The tower served as a house in times of peace and a fortress in times of war. Workmen were building the "Place of Dundas" in July 1544, when Regent Arran gave them a tip. On 13 August 1553, in the great hall, James Dundas gave his infant daughters Elizabeth and Jane gifts of silver plate. Oliver Cromwell is known to have stayed at Dundas around the time of the Battle of Dunbar in 1650; a statue of him still stands outside the keep.

In 1818 James Dundas had the 17th-century part of the building pulled down and rebuilt in a Tudor-Gothic style by the architect William Burn, whose work on churches shows through the design; his main state rooms were given large windows looking out over lawns and parkland.

The building and its extensive gardens had cost so much to construct that the Dundases were forced to sell the castle and lands in 1875, to William Russell. Dundas changed hands again in 1899, when Stewart Clark, owner of a Renfrewshire textile company and a respected philanthropist, bought it along with five farms and 1,500 acres of agricultural land. Clark's son John took the double-barrelled name Stewart-Clark in his father's honour and was made a baronet in 1918.

During the Second World War the castle served as the headquarters for protecting the Forth Bridge. Sir Jack Stewart-Clark, great-grandson of Stewart Clark and a Member of the European Parliament from 1979 to 1999, inherited the property from his mother in 1995 and found it substantially deteriorated. He first considered selling, then instead began a programme of restoration: the keep, uninhabited for over 300 years, had its parapet rebuilt and its stonework restored and was fitted with electricity, heating, a lavatory and a kitchen, while dry rot was cleared from the castle and the drawing room, library and dining room redecorated. He remained the owner until 2026.

The tower house and the adjoining Tudor-Gothic mansion are listed separately at Category A, and the grounds are included in the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes in Scotland. The castle now works as an exclusive venue, often for weddings, with a self-catering holiday cottage, the Boathouse, on the shore of Dundas Loch.