Meggernie Castle

Meggernie stands halfway up Glen Lyon, where the river Lyon runs on to join the Tay shortly below Loch Tay. The name may be of Pictish origin, perhaps from an element cognate with the Welsh migwernedd, "boggy meadow". Before the castle was built, there is evidence that a thatched keep of some sort was put up on the site.

The date of the oldest surviving part of Meggernie has not been determined. The evidence points to Clan Gregor, both as holders of the site and as its original builders.

The MacGregors were slowly driven out of their lands, which accounts for the Barony of Glenlyon being given to the Campbells, their rivals and neighbours. The grant survives in the Register of the Great Seal, in which King James VI gives the Campbell family ownership of land in the area to form the barony, and the chief of that barony is said to reside in "the Tower named Meggernie". The bequest is dated 4 March 1603, which ties in loosely with a construction date of 1585.

Robert Campbell of Glenlyon had a slated roof put on the thatched keep, and further additions were made in later years.

The castle is five storeys tall, with walls around five feet thick in keeping with its role as a defensive structure. Each corner carries a square tower bracketed out from the main body of the building. The original castle had few windows, and those it has are narrow slits in the wall, a style in keeping with the fashion of the day and found in other fortified castles and keeps built around the same time. A long, low mansion house of more modern date extends from one side of the keep, its style matched to that of the original building.

The best known of the castle's ghost stories dates from the time the house was occupied by the Menzieses of Culdares. An early Menzies of Culdares married a very beautiful woman much younger than himself, grew jealous of her, and is said to have murdered her in a fit of rage. He concealed the body in a locked chest in one of the castle towers, absented himself for a time, and on his return spread the story that his wife had drowned while the two of them were travelling in Europe.

The locals believed him. Still anxious, by the telling, he resolved to move the body to the nearby churchyard, cut it in two, and buried the lower half in the graveyard one night, leaving the upper part in the chest. Before he could bury the rest he met with foul play, and the next morning his body was found at the entrance to the tower where the upper half of his wife's body still lay. Nobody was ever tried for his murder.

Guests at the castle have claimed to see the upper part of a woman's body floating through the air, and one visitor said he woke to the feeling of a red-hot kiss on his cheek and saw a woman's torso move away from the bed and through the wall. During restoration work in the mid-19th century, workmen were said to have unearthed the skeletal remains of the upper half of a woman's body; these were removed for burial, and sightings were reported after that.

From 1920 until his death in 1958 the castle was owned by Sir Ernest Wills, 3rd Baronet. It passed to his son, Lt Col Sir Edward de Winton-Wills, 4th Baronet of Hazelwood, who held it until its sale in 1979. The castle, in Perth and Kinross, was designated a category A listed building on 5 October 1971.