Muness Castle

Muness Castle stands near the southern end of Unst, Scotland’s northernmost inhabited island, and is reckoned the most northerly fortified house in the British Isles. It was raised in 1598 for Laurence Bruce of Cultmalindie, a half-brother of Robert Stewart, 1st Earl of Orkney, and the design has been linked to Andrew Crawford, a master of works active in the Northern Isles. The building takes the form of a long rectangular block with rounded towers set at its north and south corners, an arrangement that let gun loops sweep the approaches to the entrance. Corbelled turrets, gabled roofing and conical caps on the towers once completed its outline. Its life as a residence proved short. In August 1627 the castle was burnt by foreign privateers and seems never to have been fully repaired; it was abandoned before the century closed and passed out of the Bruce family in 1718. Today it is roofless, its upper storey largely gone and reportedly quarried to build the surrounding boundary wall, though the ground and first floors survive substantially intact. Scheduled as a monument in 1953, it is now cared for by Historic Environment Scotland.