Lennox Castle

Lennox Castle was built between 1837 and 1841 by David Hamilton for John Lennox Kincaid, on the Lennox of Woodhead estate at Lennoxtown in East Dunbartonshire, about 12 miles north of Glasgow. It replaced the earlier Kincaid House. This was a 19th-century country mansion, not a fortress — its story belongs to the century that followed, and it is a hard one.

In 1927 the castle and its land were purchased by the Glasgow Corporation and converted into a hospital for people with learning disabilities, which opened in 1936. It became Scotland's largest institution of its kind: the castle itself served as the nurses' home, while the grounds held accommodation for about 1,200 patients. Soon after opening the facilities were reported to be vastly overcrowded, understaffed and underfunded.

By 1982, 1,360 patients aged between 10 and 80 were looked after by around 500 staff, fewer than half of them trained nurses; the Scottish Hospitals Advisory Service had visited the year before and recommended a further 100 staff. The care provided was reported to be poor, with patients malnourished. A separate maternity unit operated between the 1940s and 1960s — the singer Lulu and the footballer John Brown were among the babies born there.

The hospital closed in 2002, reflecting the shift towards supporting people with learning disabilities in the community rather than in institutions; it was also noted that patients had been treated poorly by staff.

The castle, Category A listed since the 1970s, has stood in ruins since a fire in 2008. Part of the grounds was converted into Celtic F.C.'s Lennoxtown Training Centre, opened in 2007, while land towards Lennoxtown village was earmarked for a phased residential development known as Campsie View — the first phase was completed in 2015, with further construction planned to begin by late 2026.