Inveraray Castle

James V stayed at the old castle of Inveraray, on the shore of Loch Fyne in Argyll, in September 1533; a new lute was bought for him in Glasgow and carried to Inveraray by his servant Troilus. Improvements on the estate began in 1743 under Archibald Campbell, Earl of Ilay, soon to become 3rd Duke of Argyll. The foundation stone of the new castle was laid in October 1746, and it replaced an earlier fifteenth-century castle.

The designers who worked on the new castle included William Adam and Roger Morris, and the house is one of the earliest Gothic Revival buildings, together with Strawberry Hill House. It was built of ashlar lapis ollaris, and all its roofs were flat and crenellated to begin with; a third floor with a pitched roof and dormer windows was added later on all four wings, and steep conical roofs were put on the four round towers. Later in the eighteenth century Robert Mylne created a number of neoclassical rooms inside for the 5th Duke, and those are among the rooms open to the public. In the 1770s the village of Inveraray was demolished and rebuilt a short distance away, to give the castle a more secluded setting.

James Lees-Milne was not impressed by the house when he visited it in 1943, noting the "ugly" grey stone and calling it "grim and forbidding". It was designated a Category A listed building on 20 July 1971. A devastating fire struck Inveraray in 1975, and for some time the 12th Duke and his family lived in the castle's basement while restorations were carried out, funded by a worldwide fundraising drive.

Inveraray has been the seat of the Dukes of Argyll, chiefs of Clan Campbell, since the eighteenth century, and the 13th Duke and his family live in private apartments there that occupy two floors between two of the four crenellated circular towers. The castle is open to visitors, and its collection runs to more than 1,300 pikes, muskets, swords and other weapons. Recent renovations installed the house's first central heating system, powered by burning wood-chips from the family's forestry holdings, where before there had been only open fires. The estate around it covers 60,000 acres, and its activities include commercial forestry, tenanted farming, wind and hydro power and deer stalking. When the duke is in residence his banner of arms is raised above the castle; at other times it is the banner of arms of Clan Campbell, which appears in the first and fourth quarters of his own.