[6] 'The Orchard' was the object of much destructive attention on the part of royal armies in the period between 1565 and 1579, suffering damage in a siege of 1570 during the Marian civil war due to James Hamilton, Duke of Châtellerault's support for Mary, Queen of Scots.

Dubbed by the Hamilton family as 'The Great Design', these works led to the creation of a U-plan country house, with an open south-facing courtyard which followed the outline of the existing late 16th-century enclosed quadrangle.

The south front was rebuilt between 1693 and 1701 in the Baroque style, the principal feature of this new formal ceremonial entrance being the frontispiece with its huge Corinthian portico.

[9] Modifications and additions continued during the next century, including the purchase or exchange of land surrounding the palace, enabling extensive landscaping to take place.

The Duke wanted to erect a grand residence which not only reflected the increasing wealth and national standing of the family but also provided an appropriately grand setting for the considerable art collections which he continued to gather, including the Beckford art collection and library that his wife Susan had inherited from her father William Thomas Beckford.

These held much fine furniture and by the mid-19th century housed one of the best private collections of paintings in Scotland, including works by Peter Paul Rubens (see below), Titian, Anthony van Dyck, and other masters.

[12] After his marriage in 1843, William, 11th Duke of Hamilton lived chiefly in France and Germany, took little interest in his Scottish or English affairs and never attended the House of Lords.

It was closer to the major race courses and also meant that he could base his steam yacht Thistle at Ipswich, from where he could sail to Brodick Castle, Cowes and racecourse venues on the continent.

[15][16][17] The sale included paintings by Dürer, Rembrandt, Rubens, Velázquez and van Dyck; Chinese, Japanese, Meissen, Sèvres and English porcelain; bronzes, furniture, tapestries, chandeliers, busts, and vases.

The 13th Duke had been paralysed in 1890 by a rare tropical disease and considered the huge palace unsuitable as a modern residence, preferring to live a rural life at the smaller Dungavel House in Lanarkshire.

The palace had not been updated since 1876 and could not be brought up to date and maintained with only the income from the Hamilton and Kinneil estates in central Scotland that the 13th Duke had inherited.

[18] In July 1914 the Duke and Duchess hosted King George V and Queen Mary when they visited the palace, which was marked by a grand reception.

[19] In June 1915 the Duke lent part of the palace for the accommodation of soldiers and sailors who had been injured during the First World War and discharged from hospitals and convalescent homes.

In November 1915 the 12th Duke's trustees granted the Bent Colliery Company the authority to work the coal seam beneath Hamilton Palace.

[20] In June 1919 the trustees petitioned the Court of Session for authority to sell the contents of Hamilton Palace and then demolish the building.

The sale raised £232,847 (equivalent to £13,515,976 in 2023) and included furniture, porcelain, silver plate, tapestries, jewellery and paintings by van Dyck, Rubens, Rembrandt, Reynolds, Romney, Raeburn, Delacroix and Winterhalter.

When the travel writer H. V. Morton visited Hamilton Palace in 1927 or 1928, he found that the roof had been removed, but that the black marble staircase and the bronze Atlantes were still in place in the now soaking interior.

Situated in the Low Parks, the palace stood at the centre of an extensive garden which, as its main axis, had a great north–south tree-lined avenue over three miles (five kilometres) in length.

It is a free-standing carved cross of red sandstone standing to a height of 2.1 metres and is decorated on all four sides with figurative scenes of humans, animals and patterns.

The architects David Hamilton and Henry Edmund Goodridge both produced designs for a chapel and mausoleum on the medieval church site.

Neither came to anything and in the end, in 1848, the commission eventually fell to David Bryce to build Hamilton Mausoleum on a fresh site 650 feet (200 metres) northeast of the palace.