Brodick Castle, Arran

Brodick Castle is an outstanding and early example of a fortified Scottish country house, embodying around 600 years of social and architectural history. The building as it stands today was largely remodelled and extended in 1844 by the architect James Gillespie Graham (1776–1855) for the 11th Duke of Hamilton and his wife, Princess Marie of Baden. It incorporates substantial remains of a 17th century house at its centre, a late medieval tower house at its eastern end, and fragments possibly as early as the 13th century identified within the fabric. A 20th century range encloses the courtyard to the north. The building is set on a hilltop site overlooking terraced gardens, approached by stairs to the south and west.

EXTERNAL APPEARANCE

The castle is a long, rectangular-plan country house of one to five storeys, fourteen bays wide on its south garden elevation, built predominantly in the Scots Baronial idiom. The external walls are of pink coursed rubble throughout, with harled brick used on the north courtyard range. Windows are multi-paned timber sash and case, smaller in the older parts of the building. Roofs are slated timber, with the battery roofed in bitumen, probably over stone flags beneath. There are numerous ridge and gable chimney stacks.

SOUTH (GARDEN) ELEVATION

The fourteen-bay south elevation represents different building phases, arranged in groups of two, one, four, four, one and one bays. The whole has a corbelled, crenellated parapet, with the pre-17th century tower house at the eastern end.

At the far left stands the five-storey, two-bay 19th century tower, with battered walls and deep embrasures at the lower storey. It has a caphouse with crowsteps, both roofed and unroofed bartizans, a parapet with crenellation, pseudo-machicolation, and dummy cannon waterspouts. A transitional four-storey crowstepped single bay connects this to four further bays of three storeys, which include a garden door midway along. These bays feature a corbelled string course bisecting the ground floor fenestration, segmental-headed windows to the principal first floor, a further corbelled string course, and dummy bartizans.

The central 17th century block, of four and three storeys, has two windows set in deep embrasures followed by two gunloops at ground floor level. Set back to the right is the pre-17th century tower house, with a round-based tower corbelled out to the square at second storey level, connected by a short jamb link to a crowstepped rectangular block with small windows at the upper storeys only. The south elevation is terminated at the far right by the single-storey blind elevation of the artillery platform, which has two square gun ports at parapet level, stone steps up to a doorway, and a gunloop to the right of the door.

WEST (ENTRANCE) ELEVATION

The west elevation is three to five storeys high across five bays. The walls are battered, with deep embrasures at the lower storey. The principal entrance is to the left, set within a segmental-headed aperture with roll mouldings. The ground floor windows to the right are also within deep segmental-headed apertures. A pair of empty niches sits above the door. Fenestration above the first floor is irregular. The corbelled parapet features machicolation, crenellation, and dummy cannon. A crowstepped gable to the left carries a sculpted armorial panel displaying family emblems, motto, and date. A courtyard wall extends to the left.

NORTH ELEVATION

The north elevation presents a blind three-storey wall of the west wing to the right, a courtyard wall at centre with an entranceway to the left, followed by two blind gables and a small windowless lean-to structure. It is terminated by the blind wall of the single-storey artillery platform, with two square gun ports at parapet level.

COURTYARD ELEVATIONS

The north elevation of the courtyard consists of one- to three-storey lean-to structures of ad-hoc appearance set against the three-storey wall of the main building, including a four-bay single-storey pitched roof extension with irregular fenestration. There is a corbelled and crenellated parapet with water spouts above, and stone steps lead up to a service doorway in a re-entrant angle to the east. The east courtyard elevation is three storeys high with irregular fenestration and a fragment of a demolished section. The north courtyard range is a single-storey, flat-roofed harled structure of 20th century date, with domestic doors and windows to the left and three pairs of timber garage doors to the right.

INTERIOR

The interior, inspected in 2010, is predominantly decorated in a 19th century historicist scheme. There were major 20th century interventions to the vaulted ground floor of the 17th century central block. Pre-19th century features, including newel staircases, survive at the eastern end within the tower house and artillery battery.

The piano nobile has private apartments to the west, fitted out with mid-19th century Classical fittings and plain mouldings. The grand public rooms at the centre are decorated in revivalist modes with Baronial ceilings, incorporating re-used earlier timber fixtures and fittings. The second floor has well-proportioned rooms with plain mouldings, 19th century marble fireplaces, and 20th century bathroom and kitchen fittings. The upper floors and garrets, now converted to flats, have 19th century plain marble or timber fireplaces and simple mouldings, alongside 20th century kitchen and bathroom fixtures and fittings.

West Wing, Ground Floor: The entrance hall is in Scots Renaissance style, with a carved hardwood fireplace surmounted by a heraldic panel dated 1925, a coffered plaster ceiling, and glazed hardwood doors to the vestibule. The principal staircase is a sandstone scale and platt design with a hardwood strapwork pattern balustrade and a sculpted duocorn on the newel. The library has a carved marble Baroque fireplace with blue and white glazed tiles. The office has an umbrella vaulted ceiling and a hardwood fireplace with Solomonic columns.

West Wing, First Floor: The stair landing has a stone arcade with composite pilasters. The suite of private apartments to the west contains a marble fireplace and a carved timber fireplace in the form of an entablature on composite columns, together with 19th century bathroom fittings that are not original to the room. The drawing room has a Jacobean style heraldic bossed plaster ceiling and an Italian Baroque marble fireplace; this is the first in the suite of public rooms.

Central Block, Ground Floor: A service corridor with flagstone floors and plain plaster walls runs along the north side, with service rooms off it. To the south is a barrel vaulted hall, now used as a restaurant, with deep embrasures; it has been enlarged by openings slapped through to rooms to the west. Two transverse vaulted windowless chambers, formerly the wine and beer cellars and currently display rooms, lie to the east.

Central Block, First Floor: A barrel vaulted corridor runs to the north, with panelled hardwood doors leading to the principal rooms. The suite of 19th century public rooms continues with the library to the west, which has a strapwork pattern bossed plaster ceiling and an ornately carved black marble fireplace with glazed tiles bearing the Hamilton motto in the ingoes. The dining room has salvaged Jacobean oak panelling including doors, a stone Gothic Revival style fireplace dated 1925, and a bossed floral and foliate pattern ceiling.

East End: A stone flagged corridor leads to a double-height kitchen retaining a Victorian Carron cooking range, roasting spit, and bread oven, situated to the northeast. Two newel staircases lead to flats above. There is a vaulted sentry room to the east, a passage to an external oak door on the south, and Bruce's Room — a stone-lined space with double-skinned studded oak doors — accessed by a separate stair on the south side of the corridor.

HISTORICAL AND ARCHITECTURAL CONTEXT

The origins of Brodick Castle are obscure but Late Medieval, and fragments possibly as early as the 13th century have been identified within the fabric at the eastern end. The castle has a turbulent history, having been besieged, destroyed, rebuilt, and extended many times. Medieval, Renaissance, Civil War, and Victorian periods are all evident in the surviving fabric.

The estate was originally the nucleus of the Lands of Arran. Fought over during the Scottish Wars of Independence, it was transformed into an Earldom and granted to James Hamilton by James IV in 1503. The Isle of Arran remained a minor estate of the Dukes of Hamilton until the late 19th century. Agricultural improvements in the 18th century, culminating in the clearances of the early 19th century, displaced smallscale and subsistence farming on the island. From the mid-19th century, improved transportation made Brodick an attractive picturesque resort and hunting destination; the castle was substantially rebuilt and the surrounding area laid out as gardens and pleasure grounds at this time.

The 11th Duke and his wife commissioned James Gillespie Graham to remodel and extend the building in 1844. Most of what is visible externally dates from the early 16th to mid-17th centuries, though certainly altered during the 1840s, and the gardens were also landscaped and terraced at this time. Gillespie Graham's extension was built on the site of a walled enclosure and provided a new entrance hall and two other significant rooms on the ground floor — now the library and office — with a new drawing room on the first floor linking the new work to the older building. He also created the library and dining room within the older fabric, with antique panelling from Letheringham Abbey installed in the dining room in 1921. Additional ancillary rooms were formed in the courtyard, and a double-height kitchen was constructed within earlier walls to the east of the courtyard.

Gillespie Graham's full scheme was more ambitious than what was ultimately built, with provision made for further additions to the northwest. His southwest tower had to be redesigned in a stronger form after it collapsed in 1844, reportedly due to poor quality mortar. Subsequent proposals for extension by William Burn in 1854–60 and by W. J. Green in 1875–76 for the 12th Duke came to nothing, and further proposals of 1918–19 by Reginald Blomfield were only partially realised in the ancillary buildings of the north courtyard range. The single-storey north courtyard range, known as Bobbie's Building, was built in 1921, while the lean-to buildings on the south side of the courtyard date from the early to mid-19th century with subsequent alterations. Bruce's Room was created in 1935 in memory of Robert Bruce's connection with Arran. In 1958, a partition wall was removed and an opening slapped through from the 19th century wing to the 17th century vaulted chamber to create a restaurant and other facilities.

On the death of the 12th Duke in 1895, Brodick passed to the future Duchess of Montrose. The castle has been a property of the National Trust for Scotland since 1957, and much of its contents — including an important collection of furniture and artefacts once owned by William Beckford — have been preserved in situ.

James Gillespie Graham (1776–1855) was a prominent and prolific Scottish architect, known particularly for his neo-Gothic churches and numerous country houses. While many of his country house designs are castellated or picturesque in character, it was with Brodick and Ayton Castle that he made the transition to the fully-fledged Scots Baronial style pioneered by William Burn and David Bryce.

Brodick Castle is part of a listed group forming the Brodick Castle Estate, which also includes the Bavarian Summerhouse, Cnocan Burn Road Bridge, Greenhyde and Castle Cottages, the Ice House, the Walled Garden, the Nursery, the Main Gates, West Gates and Coastal Boundary Walls, South Gates, Sylvania, and Brodick Kennels.