Drumlanrig Castle

Drumlanrig Castle was built between 1679 and 1689 for William Douglas, first Duke of Queensberry, on the site of an ancient Douglas stronghold overlooking the Nith Valley. Constructed in distinctive pink sandstone, it is an example of late seventeenth-century Renaissance architecture. The house has 120 rooms, seventeen turrets and four towers, giving its ‘Pink Palace’ nickname a clear architectural basis. What the Douglases had held on the ridge before him is not described anywhere in the surviving record, so the documented history of the place effectively begins with the building that replaced it.

A formal garden was created between 1675 and 1697 according to principles associated with Sir William Bruce. Stone walls enclosed the gardens, which had six pavilions with lead ogee roofs, water features and a ‘clanging clock’. Later gardeners and designers, including Cornelius van Nerven and Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, developed summer houses, cascades and landscape features. By 1810 the formal gardens were to be removed after a period of reduced maintenance, showing how even a highly designed estate landscape was repeatedly altered over time.

In 1984 aerial photography revealed the outline of a substantial Roman fort about 320 metres south-east of Drumlanrig Castle. The Time Team television programme partially excavated the fort in 2004. This discovery places Roman-period archaeology close to the later castle, but it does not establish a direct historical connection between the fort and the Douglas residence. Its importance lies in showing that the Nith Valley site carries a much older archaeological layer than the visible seventeenth-century house and gardens.

Drumlanrig contains part of the Buccleuch art collection, including Rembrandt’s An Old Woman Reading and Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonna of the Yarnwinder. The Leonardo was stolen in 2003 and recovered in Glasgow in 2007; it is currently on loan to the Scottish National Gallery. The castle is category A listed and remains the Dumfriesshire home of the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry. The house itself opens to visitors only at very limited times of the year, while the stableyard, the playground and the walking, cycling and hiking routes across the estate stay open for far longer.

The garden the first duke laid out was walled in stone and punctuated by six pavilions, each roofed in lead with the same ogee curve as the main house, so that the enclosure read as an extension of the architecture rather than a separate space. Among its water features was a device recorded only as a clanging clock. The plan followed principles associated with Sir William Bruce and resembled his schemes for Kinross House and Balcaskie, placing Drumlanrig inside a recognisable Scottish tradition of formal garden design rather than at the end of an English one.

In 1695 the second duke inherited the estate and set about staffing its garden properly. He employed James Wood, son of Hew Wood of Hamilton, and in 1696 sent him to London for further training at the duke's expense. Wood did not come back. In his place the duke engaged a Dutch gardener, Cornelius van Nerven, and in 1698 a summer house and a set of water cascades were added to the grounds. The episode is a small illustration of how a Scottish estate garden of the period was built, which is by importing skill from wherever it could be found and paying to keep it.

The third duke employed David Low as head gardener from 1714 until 1747, and it was during those three decades that the designed landscape reached its fullest extent. More features were added, among them a bowling green early enough to be notable, and between 1728 and 1732 Sir John Clerk of Penicuik designed the water cascades that ran through the grounds. Low's tenure represents the point at which the garden was at once most elaborate and most expensive to keep.

Low died in 1747, and the estate did not replace him on the same terms. The number of gardeners was cut to between eight and ten men and the incoming head gardener was paid less than his predecessor had been. The formal grounds were allowed to slip, and by 1810 the decision had been taken to remove them altogether. A landscape that had taken a century and three dukes to assemble was undone within two generations of one man's death, largely as a matter of wages.

Tibbers Castle, a twelfth-century motte-and-bailey, stands within the Drumlanrig estate, so the ground holds at least three separate phases of fortification and residence beyond the Roman fort. The estate's more recent history has been shaped by weather as much as by design. Storm Arwen inflicted enough damage in 2021 to close routes across the property, and the walking, cycling and hiking paths now open across the estate are described as subject to closure when conditions require it.