The_well_at_Penkill_Castle_(geograph_5171246)

Penkill Castle is a 16th-century castle with later additions. It is around south of

Old Dailly Old Dailly is a hamlet in South Ayrshire, Scotland. It is located west of Dailly Dailly ( gd, Dail Mhaol Chiarain) is a village in South Ayrshire, Scotland. It is located on the Water of Girvan, south of Maybole, and east of Old Dailly. "N ...

, northeast of

Girvan Girvan ( gd, Inbhir Gharbhain, "mouth of the River Girvan") is a burgh and harbour town in Carrick, South Ayrshire, Scotland. Girvan is situated on the east coast of the Firth of Clyde, with a population of about 6,450. It lies south of Ayr, ...

in south

Ayrshire Ayrshire ( gd, Siorrachd Inbhir Àir, ) is a historic county and registration county in south-west Scotland, located on the shores of the Firth of Clyde. Its principal towns include Ayr, Kilmarnock and Irvine and it borders the counties of Re ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

History

The 16th-century tower was built by a branch of the Boyd family, relatives of the

Earls of Kilmarnock Earl of Kilmarnock was a title created twice in the Peerage of Scotland for the Boyd family. It was first created in 1454 for Robert Boyd, Great Chamberlain of Scotland. It was created a second time in 1661 for William Boyd, 10th Lord Boyd. B ...

, and extended several times. The original 16th-century square three-storey tower was extended in the 17th century to create an L-shaped building. The castle later fell into decline, becoming near ruinous by the early 19th century. Starting in 1857, the site was drastically restored and a modern wing added on the east.Penkill Castle site record at CANMORE
Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland The castle owner has been known as the

Laird Laird () is the owner of a large, long-established Scottish estate. In the traditional Scottish order of precedence, a laird ranked below a baron and above a gentleman. This rank was held only by those lairds holding official recognition in ...

of Penkill, starting in the 16th century with Adam Boyd, 1st Laird of Penkill. The lairds were all men until the 14th Laird, the artist Alice Boyd, in the late 19th century. She is credited with extending the original castle grounds after she became laird. The 16th Laird of Penkill, Evelyn May Courtney-Boyd, was also the last; she sold Penkill Castle in the 1980s. It was bought by an American lawyer, Elton Eckstrand, who further restored it.Boyd, Richard G
"Penkill Castle"
Clan Boyd International website. In 1992 Penkill was sold by Eckstrand to Scots-born Canadian businessman Don Brown, then subsequently in 1993 to the then

HTV Wales ITV Wales and West, previously known as Harlech Television (HTV), was an ITV franchise area in the United Kingdom until 31 December 2013, licensed to a broadcaster by the regulator Ofcom. There is no channel, past or present, named "ITV Wales ...

chairman and TV producer and director Patrick Dromgoole, and thus remains in private hands. Penkill Castle played a minor part in the history of the British

Pre-Raphaelite The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (later known as the Pre-Raphaelites) was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James ...

movement. In the late 1850s, the Pre-Raphaelite artist

William Bell Scott William Bell Scott (1811–1890) was a Scottish artist in oils and watercolour and occasionally printmaking. He was also a poet and art teacher, and his posthumously published reminiscences give a chatty and often vivid picture of life in the ...

began a liaison with Alice Boyd, whose brother was then the laird. Scott visited Penkill often and on one occasion painted a series of murals illustrating

James I James I may refer to: People *James I of Aragon (1208–1276) *James I of Sicily or James II of Aragon (1267–1327) *James I, Count of La Marche (1319–1362), Count of Ponthieu *James I, Count of Urgell (1321–1347) *James I of Cyprus (1334–13 ...

's poem ''

The Kingis Quair ''The Kingis Quair'' ("The King's Book") is a fifteenth-century poem attributed to James I of Scotland. It is semi-autobiographical in nature, describing the King's capture by the England, English in 1406 on his way to France and his subsequent im ...

'' in the staircase. Scott died at Penkill on 22 November 1890. William_Bell_Scott,_Scottish_Artist

The castle was frequented by other Pre-Raphaelite artists and writers, including

Christina Rossetti Christina Georgina Rossetti (5 December 1830 – 29 December 1894) was an English writer of romantic, devotional and children's poems, including "Goblin Market" and "Remember". She also wrote the words of two Christmas carols well known in Brit ...

, who wrote of it: "Even Naples in imagination cannot efface the quiet fertile comeliness of Penkill in reality."''Christina Rossetti: A Biographical and Critical Study'' (1898) by Mackenzie Bell, page 51

Notes

External links

Penkill Castle site record at CANMORE
at Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) * {{Authority control Castles in South Ayrshire Category A listed buildings in South Ayrshire Listed castles in Scotland