Brodick Castle

By the mid-thirteenth century Arran formed part of the Kingdom of Mann and the Isles, ruled by Gall Gaidheal chieftains under the nominal overlordship of Hákon Hákonarson, King of Norway. In July 1263 Hákon sailed a great fleet to Lamlash Bay on Arran before crossing the firth to fight the Battle of Largs; his retreating army regrouped on the island, then withdrew to Orkney, where the king died, and the 1266 Treaty of Perth ceded the Hebrides to Scotland.

During Robert the Bruce's time in hiding after his defeat at the Battle of Methven, tradition places his legendary encounter with a spider on Arran. In the winter of 1306 James Douglas, Lord of Douglas, struck at forces supplying Brodick Castle, seizing much-needed provisions before an assault on Carrick. Acting with Sir Robert Boyd of Kilmarnock, Douglas dislodged the English garrison from Brodick in January 1307, one of the first castles to fall to Bruce's cause.

In 1406, the same year James I was captured by English pirates and Robert III died, an English force sailed into Brodick Bay and badly damaged the castle. Further destruction followed in 1455 at the hands of John of Islay, Lord of the Isles. Some time after 1470 James III granted the ruined stronghold to his brother-in-law James Hamilton, 1st Lord Hamilton, whose son was created Earl of Arran in 1503 and added the Lymphad of the Isles to the family's coat of arms.

By 1510 the Earl of Arran had rebuilt Brodick as a tower house, though it suffered further raids from the Campbells and MacLeans. During the Rough Wooing of Mary, Queen of Scots, an English force under the Earl of Lennox attacked the castle on behalf of Henry VIII. As Regent of Scotland during Mary's infancy, the 2nd Earl continued to enlarge the building; in 1550 Andrew Hamilton and Dean John Slater worked on it, and by 1552 a carpenter named Peter Moffett was fitting new doors.

The castle was drawn into the Wars of the Three Kingdoms when Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll, seized it from James Hamilton, 3rd Marquess and later 1st Duke of Hamilton, in 1639. Hamilton recovered Brodick in 1644 but lost it again to the Campbells in 1646; captured after the Battle of Preston, he was executed in March 1649. In 1650 Cromwell's Roundheads occupied the castle and built an artillery battery there to command the firth.

The dukedom and earldom passed to the first Duke's sole surviving child, Anne, who had been sent to Brodick for safety as a child; she later returned to her Lowland estates and in 1656 married William Douglas, who became Duke of Hamilton for life and used the castle chiefly for hunting. It remained a sporting estate until 1844, when the architect James Gillespie Graham nearly tripled its size for William, 11th Duke of Hamilton, following his marriage to Princess Marie of Baden.

The 12th Duke had no male heir, so although his titles passed to a distant cousin, Brodick itself was entailed on his daughter Lady Mary Louise Douglas-Hamilton, who married the 6th Duke of Montrose in 1906. In 1958 the National Trust for Scotland acquired the castle and gardens from Lady Jean Fforde in lieu of death duties owed on the death of her mother, the Dowager Duchess of Montrose.