A castle to call your own

THIS WEEK: Romantic castles, including this Highland retreat with a dramatic tale to tell

SOMETIMES they come with turrets, sometimes with battlements, and sometimes they are just a solitary tower, but castles are t he s t uff of property dreams. They just drip with history and, if you are very lucky, will have a romantic tale to tell.

Duchray Castle is an archetypal fairy-tale affair. It sits in 80 acres on the edge of the Trossachs with six miles of a trout and salmon river. And it boasts a thrilling association with Rob Roy MacGregor, the Scottish Robin Hood, outlaw, swordsman and supporter of the Jacobite rebellion, who took refuge at the castle after his father was imprisoned in 1689.

Here he was sheltered by the Graham family until the Redcoats arrived. While one Graham sister distracted the soldiers, the other helped Rob Roy escape from a tower window by knotting together bedsheets.

Oliver and Frances Bigwood have owned Duchray, which was built in 1509, for the past eight years. ‘We fell in love with it the minute we saw it,’ says Oliver. ‘It had everything – Gothic architecture, a river, streams, hills and forest.’ They had been living in Edinburgh, with Oliver involved in property renovation and Frances in event management.

‘Frances always wanted to run a weddings venue, and I wanted a really huge restoration project. The castle had been abandoned then repossessed, there were no working drains, the roof leaked, and entire windows were missing. It was the ultimate challenge.’

Restoration took two and a half years, with Oliver doing much of the work himself.

For the past five years the Bigwoods have run Duchray Castle as a B&B and weddings venue. They are moving to the Isle of Wight to be nearer to family.

‘I will miss the views down the valley, the red deer, the swifts, the pine martens – rare things that are hard to find in the world today,’ Frances says.