Mugdock Castle

The lands of Mugdock passed to the Grahams in the middle of the 13th century, when David de Graham of Dundaff acquired them from the Earl of Lennox. The castle itself may have been raised by his descendant Sir David de Graham, who died in 1376, or by that man's son in 1372. It was set on a steep-sided natural mound of hard volcanic rock at the western edge of Mugdock Loch, then a broader sheet of water than it is now.

The plan may have been shield-shaped, towers ranged around a courtyard and linked by curtain walls and blocks of building, with the main gate in the middle of the south wall. Of that early castle only the south-west tower survives complete: a narrow four-storey block entered at first-floor level by exterior steps on the east side, its basement vaulted and a single room to each storey. In 1458 the lands were erected into the Barony of Mugdock, and the castle was probably enlarged at about that time, an outer wall taking in most of the mound as an outer courtyard with its own entrance on the south, beside the south-west tower.

The Grahams were created Earls of Montrose in 1505. The most famous of them, James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose, may have been born at Mugdock in 1612.

During the Bishops' Wars, a prelude to the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, Montrose briefly supported the Covenanters. In 1641 he was imprisoned in Edinburgh for intrigues against Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll, who was to become his arch-enemy, and while he was held there Lord Sinclair sacked Mugdock. He returned to the castle until 1644, when he began his Royalist revolt as the King's commander in Scotland; Mugdock was sacked again that year. Following the defeat of Charles I, Montrose was executed in 1650 and the lands were forfeited to Argyll.

In 1661 Argyll was himself executed, and Mugdock was returned to the Grahams. They spent two years restoring the castle, raising a mansion inside the old walls. In 1682 the family bought Buchanan Auld House near Drymen, a dwelling more fitting the title of Marquess, though their official seat was kept at Mugdock for some time afterwards.

A terraced walled garden with a summer house was laid out east of the castle in the 1820s. From 1874 the house was leased by the local historian John Guthrie Smith (1834–1894), a relation of the Smith family of nearby Craigend Castle. He had the 17th-century mansion demolished and commissioned a three-storey house in the Scottish baronial style within the ruins of the old castle, extended to designs by James Sellars in the 1880s. Whatever remained of the eastern towers was obliterated by the work; the surviving south-west tower was tied to the new house by a covered first-floor passage carried over a wide-arched bridge.

The house was requisitioned for government use during the Second World War. In 1945 Hugh Fraser, later Lord Fraser, owner of the large retail chain now known as House of Fraser, bought Mugdock from the Duke of Montrose. The 19th-century Mugdock House burned down in 1966 along with the remaining 16th-century outbuildings, and was mostly demolished to its foundations the following year, though some of its walls still stand to first-floor level.

In 1981 Lord Fraser's son Sir Hugh Fraser, 2nd Baronet, gifted the castle and the surrounding estate to Central Regional Council for use as a country park. Mugdock has been protected as a scheduled monument since 1969. The estate remains Mugdock Country Park, the ruins are publicly accessible, and the surviving 14th-century tower has been renovated as a museum.