Castle Campbell

Castle Campbell stands on high ground above the town of Dollar in Clackmannanshire, its tower rising between the narrow gorges that flank the site. That deep-cut setting seems to have given the castle its earlier name, Castle Gloom, thought to derive from a Gaelic word for a chasm. The tower house was raised around 1430, either for John Stewart, Lord Lorne, or for one of his kinsmen. About 1460 it passed to Colin Campbell, 1st Earl of Argyll, through his marriage to Lord Lorne’s daughter Isabel, and the property became a stronghold of that powerful family. In February 1489 an Act of Parliament, approved by James IV, formally changed its name to Castle Campbell. The Campbells extended it considerably: a large south range added in the 1490s held a hall, outer chamber and bedchamber, with windows looking out across the Devon valley, while in the 1590s the 7th Earl built an elegant two-arched loggia of dressed ashlar facing the courtyard. The reformer John Knox preached here in 1556 and returned in 1564, and Mary, Queen of Scots stayed three days in 1563. Royalist forces burned the castle over two nights in July 1654. It is now cared for by Historic Environment Scotland.