Dunrobin Castle Sutherland
Dunrobin Castle near Golspie in Sutherland is the largest house in the Scottish Highlands, a fairytale castle of towers and turrets rising from its cliff-top position above the Dornoch Firth in a composition that combines the original medieval tower house with the nineteenth-century additions of Sir Charles Barry, the architect of the Houses of Parliament, into one of the most visually striking architectural compositions in the Highlands. The castle is the ancestral seat of the Earls and Dukes of Sutherland and the combination of the extraordinary architecture, the lavish interior and the formal French-style garden creates a visitor experience quite unlike any other Highland castle.
The interior of Dunrobin contains a remarkable collection of paintings, furniture and objects accumulated over five centuries of ducal occupation, the state rooms providing a comprehensive picture of the ambitions and tastes of one of the most powerful and most controversial aristocratic families in Scottish history. The Sutherland family was responsible for the Highland Clearances in Sutherland, the forced removal of thousands of crofting families from the inland glens to coastal settlements in the early nineteenth century in one of the most brutal episodes in Scottish social history.
The formal garden below the castle, designed in the French style with precise geometric parterres visible from the castle windows and the cliff walk above, is one of the finest formal gardens in the Highlands and provides an elaborate planted contrast to the wild Highland landscape visible beyond its walls.