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Inside Kelburn Castle, where eight centuries of family history meets riotous Brazilian street art
The 10th Earl of Glasgow's ancestral stately pile dates back to 1200, but he has since given it a seriously modern makeover
There are a few castles in Scotland that claim to be the oldest inhabited by the same family. Kelburn is one of them: “We can be fairly certain that it’s true after about 1200,” says Patrick Boyle, 10th Earl of Glasgow. Whatever the truth, Kelburn is certainly the hardest to miss, with its riotous graffiti on one side.
The earliest parts of the castle that stands today were built in “about 1400”, explains Lord Glasgow. The site has seen its fair share of history. “My father used to say that the [1263] Battle of Largs took place at the bottom of our garden, one of three battles that the Scots won against the Norwegians.”
What is known is that Kelburn was substantially rebuilt, and its 13th century parts added to by the 1st Earl of Glasgow and his builder Thomson Caldwell in about 1700; “they didn’t bother with architects,” says Lord Glasgow. “We were the first house in Scotland to have sash windows – quite an innovation in 1700. The 1st Earl was quite keen to do what was fashionable at the time.”
This continues today. When in 2007 Lord Glasgow discovered that the building’s harling render needed replacing, he sought a solution. “The harling was stuck to the stone. When we went to take it off, the stone started coming off too.” He commissioned four Brazilian street artists, Nunca, Nina Pandolfo and the Os Gêmeos twins, to paint the walls and turrets of the south side of the castle.
He was initially nervous about the project, but has come to like it. “I thought that Historic Scotland wouldn’t allow it, but to my amazement it said we could keep it as long as we took it off after two years, which of course, we didn’t.”
Kelburn’s bright graffiti suits the area, which is 35 miles from Glasgow. “The rivalry between Edinburgh and Glasgow is healthy for Scotland. Edinburgh is much prettier but Glasgow has more vitality; Edinburgh is a sort of receptacle of arts, whereas Glasgow generates it.”
Lord Glasgow was born in 1939, the son of Rear Admiral David Boyle, 9th Earl of Glasgow. He was the son of Captain Patrick Boyle, the 8th Earl, a naval officer who commanded HMS Pyramus during the First World War, and later became a supporter of the British Union of Fascists.
Lord Glasgow chose not to pursue the naval officer path, and instead made his living as a documentary filmmaker. With his late wife Isabel James, whom he married in 1974, he inherited the estate in 1984 upon his father’s death. The couple have two children, Lady Alice, 38, and David, Viscount Kelburn, 41, who is increasingly involved in managing the estate.
Running Kelburn is not easy. The estate attracts around 80,000 visitors a year to its 3,500 acres, which include a wind farm on the Firth of Clyde, a handful of cottages, a country park (the former home farm, redeveloped by Lord Glasgow in 1977) with equestrian facilities, and Lord Kelburn’s newest venture, yurts.
The grounds are open this weekend and then from Easter; castle tours run from mid-July to early September.
Moreover, it is Lord Glasgow’s home. “People think that people who live in castles are rich, but people who live in castles aren’t rich because they live in castles – and they’ve got to maintain them,” he says. “It is a drain on everything.”
At the turn of the century, he was concerned that he would have to sell up. “I was saved by the fact that there was a marina on our foreshore and someone wanted to buy it, otherwise it would have gone down the drain.” He has, in any case, sold his London home to be able to continue living at Kelburn.
“It doesn’t have huge numbers of very valuable things, just odd things which relate to the family history,” he says. One such item is a Maori cape, made out of kiwi feathers – “My great-grandfather was governor of New Zealand and he was given this as a token of esteem by one of the Maori chiefs.”
As well as running the estate, Lord Glasgow sits as a Liberal Democrat peer in the House of Lords, where he has a particular interest in the BBC and in the debate around assisted dying.
His father was a “great conservative”, and he determines that there are two types of conservatives – “the old-fashioned ones, people who like traditional things. Then there are the thrusting ones who are interested in making as much money as they can. I didn’t like either of those. I’m liberal by instinct, I think we should tolerate almost everything.”
The Boyles were made earls in 1703 when David Boyle, Lord Boyle, a supporter of the Acts of Union and the last Treasurer-depute before the union with England, was promoted. Lord Glasgow is proud of being the Earl of Glasgow.
“It’s like asking Prince Charles whether he’s proud of being Prince Charles – he’s been brought up to be that. Human beings, apart from wanting food and enough money need to belong to something. If you come from a long lineage as I do then you know who you are.”