Sanquhar Castle

The castle is a stronghold bounded on the west by the River Nith, to the north by a burn, and made strong by a deep ditch running the remainder of the boundary.

[2] In July 1617, James VI and I, visited the castle en route to Glasgow: the Crichtons welcomed him with a display so huge that it bankrupted them.

From then on the castle at Sanquhar began to steadily crumble to a ruin, until 1895 when John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, purchased it and attempted to enthuse a restoration of his ancestral home, following successful restorations at Cardiff Castle and Castell Coch in Wales.

This was undertaken by Robert Weir Schultz and the squarer and more structurally sound sections rebuilt at that time can clearly be identified.

[4] Work ended following the death of the Marquess in 1900, and what is left of the site is a mix of restoration and original stonework, but still very far from any sense of completion.