Muckrach Castle is a Grade A listed building in the Cairngorms National Park local planning authority area, Scotland. First listed on 5 October 1971. Tower house.
Muckrach Castle
- WRENN ID
- sunken-gutter-river
- Grade
- A
- Local Planning Authority
- Cairngorms National Park
- Constituency
- Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey MP: Graham Leadbitter (SNP)
- Country
- Scotland
- Date first listed
- 5 October 1971
- Type
- Tower house
- OS grid reference
- NH 985 250
- Coordinates
- 57.30472, -3.68485
- Source
- Historic Environment Scotland listing
Description
Muckrach Castle, dated 1598 and restored around 1978, is a square three-storey tower house with an attic. It features a stair drum tower at the northwest corner that is corbelled out to a square shape at the upper two storeys, and a corbelled turret at the opposite angle. The exterior is harled with ashlar dressings. There is also a single-storey circular rubble tower at the south, which is linked to the main building by a short section of former barmkin wall.
The doorway is located in the southwest re-entrant angle and has a dated and inscribed plaque above it. Stairs leading to the second and third floors are found in an additional turret within the re-entrant angle, supported at the second floor level by a squinch arch. The turret has a conical slate roof with a finial.
On the south elevation, there is one large window, likely a later enlargement, that lights the first-floor hall. The remaining windows are small, some quite diminutive, and there is a wallhead gabled dormer on the east side. Most windows feature either four or twelve-pane glazing. Additionally, there are slit vents on the southeast bartizan, in the basement, and in the detached tower at the south. The castle has end stacks and a local slate roof.
Local climate
Muckrach Castle sits in a wetter-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 1,080 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 86% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 69% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 67 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 99% of listed buildings. Of these, 51 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
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- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
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- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
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