Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 19 on 20/3/2005.

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Not all castles are castles

When is a castle not a castle? John Hannavy looks at some buildings that don’t qualify as castles but aren’t far off.

For this, the last, of my journeys around the castles of Scotland, I have been much further north than before – the most northerly location this time is Kirkwall, capital of Orkney, while the most southerly is near Kingussie. I am also being somewhat perverse, because not one of the buildings featured in this collection is actually a castle. Each may look like a castle but looks are not necessarily enough.

That they look like castles may be because they date from a period in Scotland’s turbulent history when the only safe place to stay was a fortified building of some sort, or quite simply because the architectural style of the castle served the builder’s purpose very well.

And so it was with our first location – the austere and forbidding ruins of Ruthven Barracks sitting atop of a hill to the east of the A9 near Kingussie, and looking as though it has been there for centuries longer than it actually has.

The splendid hilltop site had successively been the location for two earlier castles dating back to the 13th century, and its fine defensive position was ideal for one of the four great military barracks built by the Hanoverian forces just after the Jacobite rebellion in the early 18th century. It was designed to house and protect a garrison of 120 men, but may, in fact, never have been occupied to capacity.

Within less than three decades, it had been stormed by the Jacobites, and fell in early 1746 when only about a dozen soldiers were based there. After the battle of .....

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By John Hannavy

Section : Scottish Castles

Page number : 18