The Skye’s the limit for the castle of the Macleods

GREAT ESTATES The history of Dunvegan has been tied to the family for centuries, learns Eleanor Doughty, and the 30th chief has ambitious plans for the future after a tricky transition to public opening

The Macleod family motto is “hold fast”. That is exactly what Dunvegan Castle has been doing, hanging on to the side of a rock off the northwest coast of the Isle of Skye, for the past 800 years. Today, it is run by Hugh Magnus Macleod of Macleod, who is proud of the fact that the castle is the oldest to be continuously inhabited by the same family in Scotland. “There are quite a few families that make that claim, but I think that we are actually legitimate. And, we have our roof.”

There is evidence of settlements on the Dunvegan estate going back as far as the Stone Age. The house itself started life as a Norse fort, the home of the Macleod clan, who, with the rival Macdonalds, ruled over Skye. A four-storey tower was built on the site in the late 14th century, and over the years it has been adapted. The 8th chief, Alasdair Crotach Macleod, built the castle’s Fairy Tower in around 1500 and, from 1623, additions to the house were made by the 15th chief. In the 18th century, the 23rd, 24th and 25th chiefs baronialised the castle, adding mock battlements and turning it from a defensive fort into the romantic castle that stands today.

Macleod is the 30th chief, a title he inherited in 2007 upon the death of his father, John Macleod. There wasn’t much of a handover: “My father went into hospital, and said, ‘good luck with Dunvegan’. That was the only advice that I got. I knew Dunvegan, but he had never involved me in the business. I asked him, please explain more about what’s involved, but he never did.” This is not the approach that Macleod intends to take with his own son, Vincent. “If he chooses to take on the challenges of being the custodian of Dunvegan, I’ll make sure that everything is on my laptop.”

Macleod’s great-grandmother Dame Flora Macleod was a pioneer of the modern clan system, and after the Second World War she travelled the world building links with the MacLeod diaspora. When she died aged 98 in 1976, the estate was two years from bankruptcy. Macleod’s father, John, “was the bridge between the Downton Abbey days of Dame Flora Macleod who lived there with staff, spending the fortune that her father had made in the City y as one of the first directors ors of Shell, and realised the only way to secure the estate was to embrace race tourism. He opened the house full time.”

This was a trying period, he says. “He was transitioning a place that was designed to keep people out into a place ce welcoming people e in.” Now, the castle is open from Easter to o October, and 168,000 00 visitors come every year ear to see its collection of art, furniture and artefacts, including the fourth-century silken Fairy Flag of Dunvegan.

The estate itself covers 42,000 acres, which – although it seems a lot, even by Scottish standards – is a shadow of its former self. “A huge amount has been sold over the past 100 years, including St Kilda, Lewis, and Harris,” says Macleod. “It was an enormous feudal empire, 20 times larger than it is now. The Macdonalds and the Macleods owned half of Skye between them.”

What the family have left is impressive, , and includes the Cuillin mountain range, which Macleo Macleod describes as “the Alps of the U UK”. This doesn’t generate much money. “The la land contributes 0.5 per cent of the revenue. It’s not good arable land land, it’s primordial bog. It’s always al been a difficult plac place to farm, and it’s not b been profitable.” The main revenue comes from touris tourism.

It’s just as well, as Macleod has spent a great deal o of money in the past d decade doing up Dunv Dunvegan. It was sorely in need of help when he took it over in 2007, ha having suffered chronic un underinvestment. But the l leaking copperlined roof was priority number one. It was not what M Macleod terms

‘My father went into hospital and said “good luck”. That was the only advice I ever gotgot’