Yours for £1.2m, a Highland ‘Castle of Spite’
IT was built a century ago for a hated dowager Duchess, used by the Norwegian royal family and is known as the ‘Castle of Spite’.
And now, after almost 70 years as one of Scotland’s most famous youth hostels, Carbisdale Castle, near Invershin in Sutherland, is on the market.
The vast building with six huge reception rooms and 40 bedrooms has a price tag of only £1.2million.
The imposing castle at the south end of the county closed three years ago due to structural damage. But the sale, announced this week by the Scottish Youth Hostel Association (SYHA), has angered local people who hoped the castle could reopen.
The move was made ‘with regret’ said SYHA chief executive Keith Legge, who added that 20 valuable statues from the castle were in store. In his statement, Mr Legge said £2million had been poured into Carbisdale over the past three years but additional funding to complete the refurbishment could not be found.
The castle had not generated enough surplus income to allow for reinvestment, he revealed.
Carbisdale was completed in 1917 for Mary Caroline, the second wife of George Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, 3rd Duke of Sutherland. She fought a battle with the family over the duke’s will in her favour and came to a financial agreement, that included the building of the castle – which had to be outside estate lands.
It was sited on a hillside to be visible to a large part of Sutherland, especially the road and rail line which the family would have to use to travel south and thus became known as the ‘Castle of Spite’.