# Castle of Mey

castle in Caithness, Scotland

Highland, United Kingdom

Palace · Fortification. 1566 CE

## Story

• George Sinclair, 4th Earl of Caithness, built the Z-plan castle between 1566 and 1572, with other accounts giving 1567 and about 1576, on lands that had belonged to the Bishops of Caithness.
• The house passed through the Sinclairs of Mey, took the name Barrogill, and was altered by William Burn in 1819, with the Tudor Gothic work also placed in 1821.
• In 1889 it passed to F. G. Heathcote, later Sinclair, and Captain Frederic Bouhier Imbert-Terry bought it in 1928 or 1929.
• Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother bought the decayed castle in 1952, restored the name Castle of Mey, and gave it to a trust in 1996.
• The trust keeps an Aberdeen Angus herd and a North Country Cheviot flock, and Charles III and Queen Camilla use the house in the summer closed days.
• A proposal in May 2025 for a garden building published no new excavation finds, while a cairn, an arrowhead, and a ninth- or tenth-century brooch are recorded in the ground around Mey.

## Visiting

Tickets are sold on the day in the gift shop, and they are not sold in advance except for coaches. Adult admission for the castle, grounds and gardens is £18.30. Concession admission is £14.50 for seniors over 60 and for students with identification. Child admission is £9.35 for ages 5 to 16 inclusive.
A family ticket is £47.85 and covers two adults and up to four children. Grounds and garden admission is £11.45 for an adult and £6.25 for a child, and a family ticket for grounds and garden is £29.10. The visitor centre takes contactless and card payments only. Opening hours in 2026 are Wednesday to Sunday from 1 May to 30 September.
The castle is closed on every Monday and Tuesday, and it closes completely from 24 July to 11 August inclusive. The castle opens from 11.00, with last admission at 15.00. The gardens, grounds, animal centre, tearoom and shop open from 10.30 until 16.00. Another account gives opening hours as seven days a week from 1 May until 30 September, with the house closed on ten days at the end of July and the beginning of August.
No photography is allowed in the castle. Dogs are not allowed in the castle, the walled garden, the visitor centre or the animal centre. Entry is not possible to every part of the historic building.

## History

The Castle of Mey stands above the Pentland Firth in the parish of Canisbay, a few miles west of John o' Groats and east of Thurso, on ground that once belonged to the Bishops of Caithness. A fortified granary or an older fortification has been suggested on the site, and a cairn, an uncertain arrowhead, and a ninth- or tenth-century brooch are recorded in the district rather than in the walls. George Sinclair, 4th Earl of Caithness, is credited with the Z-plan house, dated 1566 to 1572, also 1567, and about 1576.

The earl resigned the earldom to his heir on 2 October 1545 under Mary, Queen of Scots, and he remained active in the north through the feuds, the murder of David Rizzio, and the trial of Bothwell. One history says the house was built for his second son, William, who was murdered at Girnigoe in 1573, after which a third son, George, founded the Sinclairs of Mey. Another makes William the first laird and the founder, and has the eldest son, John, dying at Girnigoe on 15 March 1576 after imprisonment. The 4th Earl died at Edinburgh on 9 September 1582, and his heart was sent back to the church at Wick.

Debt carried the estate away in 1672. John Campbell of Glenorchy took the lands as principal creditor, was created Earl of Caithness when the 6th Earl died in 1676, and lost the title after the Battle of Altimarlach, by a privy-council act in 1681 and, in another account, by James II in 1685. The name Barrogill is placed in 1567, in the years after the Mey line received the house, and in 1789. Gardens were already noted in 1628 and in 1762, and Roy’s map of 1747 to 1755 shows the castle under the name Mey.

William Burn altered the house in 1819, with the Tudor Gothic work also dated 1821. A porch, a hall, a dining room, and a west wing are all attributed to that campaign, and Daniell’s view of 1818 shows the building just before it. The east garden’s glasshouse is tied to the 14th Earl and to 1851, while an estate map of 1836 already shows a building and a circular garden on the spot. The designed landscape is placed between 1750 and 1875, probably about 1820, and it was entered on the inventory on 30 June 1987 and on 1 July 1987.

In 1889 the 15th Earl left Barrogill to his friend F. G. Heathcote, who took the surname Sinclair. Heathcote’s widow is the person read as selling it to Captain Frederic Bouhier Imbert-Terry, in 1928 or in 1929.

During the Second World War the castle was an officers’ rest home and, in another account, troop accommodation. Farms and crofts were sold in 1950, and only the tower was habitable.

Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother bought the house in 1952, the listing also saying about 1953, for a nominal fee of 100 after the captain had offered it as a gift. She restored the name Castle of Mey, brought in electricity and water, and repaired the place between 1953 and 1960. The west wing is described both as a Burn building largely removed in the 1950s and as an older wing extended by about 1.8 metres, with a crest carved by Hew Lorimer about 1954. She stayed for three weeks in August and about ten days in October from 1955 until her last visit in October 2001.

Longoe Farm was bought in 1958. The Aberdeen Angus herd was founded in 1964, after she and King George VI had become joint patrons of the breed society in August 1937, and the Longoe flock of North Country Cheviots began in 1960. On 11 June 1996 she settled the estate on a trust. Charles III, who had come here as a boy from Gordonstoun, became its president, and from 1 January 2019 its sole trustee through the King’s Foundation.

Queen Camilla stays with him in the summer closure. The public season is given both as seven days a week from May to September, with ten days shut, and, for 2026, as Wednesday to Sunday, shut from 24 July to 11 August. A visitor centre opened in 2007, and Granary Lodge opened in May 2019.

In January 2023 the tearoom was reported as a Tuesday warming centre. A proposal of May 2025 for a garden building on the old glasshouse site published no list of excavation finds. The castle’s recorded protection is the Category A listing of 13 April 1971.

## Photographs

- [Château de Mey — Orikrin1998](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Mey_castle_2.JPG)
- [Castle of Mey — Dorcas Sinclair](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Castle_of_Mey.jpg)
- [Castle of Mey (formerly Barrogill Castle), located in the north of Caithness, on the north coast of Scotland. — jack_spellingbacon](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Castle_of_Mey_-Caithness_-Scotland-6July2006.jpg)
- [Castle of Mey — Roy Haworth](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Castle_of_Mey_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1596794.jpg)
- [Castle of Mey — Dave Simpson](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/Castle_of_Mey_-_geograph.org.uk_-_253348.jpg)
- [Castle of Mey from the Woods — Sarah Charlesworth](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Castle_of_Mey_from_the_Woods_-_geograph.org.uk_-_931356.jpg)
- [Castle of Mey from the North-west — Colin Smith](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Castle_of_Mey_from_the_North-west_-_geograph.org.uk_-_486854.jpg)
- [Castle of Mey — Sarah Charlesworth](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Castle_of_Mey_-_geograph.org.uk_-_931331.jpg)
- [Access to Castle of Mey From West Lodge via Mey village. — Stanley Howe](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Access_to_Castle_of_Mey_-_geograph.org.uk_-_479570.jpg)
- [Access to Castle of Mey From East Lodge, on Barrock road. — Stanley Howe](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Access_to_Castle_of_Mey_-_geograph.org.uk_-_479625.jpg)

## Sources

- [Castle of Mey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_of_Mey) — Wikipedia
- [John o' Groats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_o%27_Groats) — Wikipedia
- [Charles III](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_III) — Wikipedia
- [F. G. Heathcote](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._G._Heathcote) — Wikipedia
- [King George VI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_George_VI) — Wikipedia
- [Queen Camilla](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Camilla) — Wikipedia
- [William Burn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Burn) — Wikipedia
- [Second World War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_World_War) — Wikipedia
- [Aberdeen Angus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberdeen_Angus) — Wikipedia
- [George Sinclair, 4th Earl of Caithness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Sinclair,_4th_Earl_of_Caithness) — Wikipedia
- [John Sinclair, Master of Caithness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sinclair,_Master_of_Caithness) — Wikipedia
- [George Sinclair, 6th Earl of Caithness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Sinclair,_6th_Earl_of_Caithness) — Wikipedia
- [John Campbell, 1st Earl of Breadalbane and Holland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Campbell,_1st_Earl_of_Breadalbane_and_Holland) — Wikipedia
- [Mary, Queen of Scots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary,_Queen_of_Scots) — Wikipedia
- [History](https://www.castleofmey.org.uk/about/history) — Castle of Mey
- [The Castle](https://www.castleofmey.org.uk/attractions/the-castle) — Castle of Mey
- [Opening Times](https://www.castleofmey.org.uk/visitor-info/opening-times) — Castle of Mey
- [Admission Prices](https://www.castleofmey.org.uk/visitor-info/admission-prices) — Castle of Mey
- [Contact](https://www.castleofmey.org.uk/contact) — Castle of Mey
- [Longoe Farm](https://www.castleofmey.org.uk/about/the-castle-of-mey-trust/longoe-farm) — Castle of Mey
- [Castle of Mey and Garden Walls](https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/apex/f?p=1505:300:::::VIEWTYPE,VIEWREF:designation,LB1797) — Historic Environment Scotland
- [Castle of Mey (Barrogill Castle) designed landscape](https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/apex/f?p=1505:300:::::VIEWTYPE,VIEWREF:designation,GDL00096) — Historic Environment Scotland
- [Castle of Mey Gate Lodge and Gate Piers](https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/apex/f?p=1505:300:::::VIEWTYPE,VIEWREF:designation,LB1798) — Historic Environment Scotland
- [Castle of Mey, Folly: heritage statement](https://docs.planning.org.uk/20250605/200/SX0Z2TIHIJM00/oykdyc8a9zsr4rcd.pdf) — Simpson & Brown
- [A Queen and her castle](https://www.scotsman.com/news/a-queen-and-her-castle-2443392) — The Scotsman
- [Mey castle 2.JPG](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mey_castle_2.JPG) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castle of Mey.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castle_of_Mey.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castle of Mey -Caithness -Scotland-6July2006.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castle_of_Mey_-Caithness_-Scotland-6July2006.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castle of Mey - geograph.org.uk - 1596794.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castle_of_Mey_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1596794.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castle of Mey - geograph.org.uk - 253348.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castle_of_Mey_-_geograph.org.uk_-_253348.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castle of Mey from the Woods - geograph.org.uk - 931356.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castle_of_Mey_from_the_Woods_-_geograph.org.uk_-_931356.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castle of Mey from the North-west - geograph.org.uk - 486854.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castle_of_Mey_from_the_North-west_-_geograph.org.uk_-_486854.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castle of Mey - geograph.org.uk - 931331.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castle_of_Mey_-_geograph.org.uk_-_931331.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Access to Castle of Mey - geograph.org.uk - 479570.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Access_to_Castle_of_Mey_-_geograph.org.uk_-_479570.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Access to Castle of Mey - geograph.org.uk - 479625.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Access_to_Castle_of_Mey_-_geograph.org.uk_-_479625.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons

## Detailed history

The Castle of Mey stands in the parish of Canisbay on the north coast of Caithness, on rising ground above the Pentland Firth. One account places it about six miles west of John o' Groats and about fifteen miles east of Thurso, and about four hundred yards from the shore. Another places it about five miles, or eight kilometres, west of John o' Groats and about fifteen miles, or twenty-four kilometres, east of Thurso, and about five hundred yards from the shore. In fine weather the view runs north to Orkney. The designed-landscape record also gives a view west to Dunnet Head, the most northerly point of mainland Scotland. The lands are a flat coastal plain, mostly pasture, with few trees, and they take the wind and the salt off the firth.

John o' Groats is the village at the north-eastern tip, two and a half miles north-east of Canisbay. Its name comes from Jan de Groot, a fifteenth-century Dutchman who ran a ferry to Orkney after King James IV had acquired those islands from Norway. A local legend treats the “o’ Groats” as a charge of one groat for the boat. The name in fact comes from the Dutch de groot, “the large”, and people from the village are called Groaters. The village is about six miles from the Orkney Isles and about four and a quarter miles from the uninhabited island of Stroma. A summer ferry runs to Burwick on South Ronaldsay. The northernmost point of the mainland is Dunnet Head, not the village, and the north-eastern corner is Duncansby Head, about two miles to the east. The longest journey in the United Kingdom is reckoned to Duncansby Head rather than to the village. In 2007 the population was about three hundred. For many years the village was the northern end of the old trunk road, which now finishes at Scrabster. The phrase that pairs it with Land’s End belongs to walks, rides, and charity journeys. An octagonal house, with eight doors and eight windows so that eight branches of the family could sit with no one at the head, was said to have stood where a hotel was built in 1875. That hotel closed, fell into disrepair, and reopened in August 2013. A signpost for photographs was put up in 1964 on private land. None of that village history is the castle, but the castle sits a few miles west of it, and the Queen Mother first saw the house while being driven along the coast road toward John o' Groats.

The lands of Mey belonged to the Bishops of Caithness. A fortified granary has been suggested as an earlier use of the spot, and the castle may stand on an older fortification. Around the house, not in its walls, the ground holds older traces. A cairn to the west may be a monument or a burial place and is evidence of Neolithic building. A single prehistoric arrowhead is recorded on the far side of Loch of Mey, at a findspot that is not reliable and is some distance from the castle. A penannular brooch of the ninth or tenth century, found by a metal detectorist to the north-west, is taken as a sign that people with some wealth were here later. One 1988 account, repeated in a study of the grounds in May 2025, treats Mey as the only labelled place in Caithness on Matthew Paris’s map of Britain. No excavation of the standing castle has published a list of objects from those earlier centuries. The May 2025 study was written for a proposed garden building, and it recorded the possibility of further Neolithic material if the ground is opened. It did not report a dig already finished.

George Sinclair, 4th Earl of Caithness and chief of Clan Sinclair, is the man credited with the house. He was the son of John Sinclair, 3rd Earl of Caithness, and of Elizabeth, daughter of William Sutherland, 5th of Duffus. He died in 1582. On 2 October 1545 he resigned the earldom into the hands of Mary, Queen of Scots, who granted a charter of the earldom to his son and heir, John Sinclair, with the earl keeping a life-rent and a terce. Mary, Queen of Scots, had been queen since 14 December 1542, six days after her birth, and she remained queen until her forced abdication on 24 July 1567. The earl sat on the Privy Council. For years before 1553 he was at feud with Clan Mackay. On 18 September 1553 the council ordered him to meet the Earl of Huntly, the lieutenant-general in the north, and the Bishop of Ross, at Inverness, under pain of rebellion. In 1555 he met Mary, Queen of Scots, at Inverness to settle disorders in that country. One history of the family says he was told to bring his countrymen to court, neglected or declined, and was imprisoned at Inverness, then Aberdeen, then Edinburgh, until he paid a considerable sum. On 18 December 1556 he received a remission under the Great Seal for oppression of the lieges. On 22 December 1561 he received two charters of the office of justiciar from Portinculter to the Pentland Firth, an office his predecessors had held. On the night of the murder of David Rizzio, 9 March 1566, he was with the party that tried to rescue the queen, and, being outnumbered, he retired. Two days later the queen escaped to Dunbar Castle with Lord Darnley, and the earl was among the friends who joined them. His justiciary commission was extended on 14 May 1566. On 12 April 1567 he was foreman of the trial of James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, for the murder of Lord Darnley.

The building dates are not one date. The usual span is 1566 to 1572. A designed-landscape history says that in 1567 the earl, who twenty-two years earlier had resigned the earldom to his son, acquired the property and built a Z-plan tower, and that he called it Barrogill Castle. A study of the grounds says he acquired the barony of Mey from the Bishop of Caithness in 1566, that the main family seat was Girnigoe, and that he made the Mey lands over to his second son William in 1572, so that William became the first laird. An architectural note dates the castle to about 1576. Another says it was built by the Sinclairs in 1567, and another that the first phase is likely to fall in 1560 to 1570 and may have gone on for a long time, possibly on an earlier site. His initials, and those of his wife Lady Elizabeth Graham, daughter of William Graham, 2nd Earl of Montrose, are said to remain on the surviving fabric. An ancient carving of his arms is on the castle.

The plan is described in more than one way, and the differences should stay visible. It is a Z-plan house. One account makes the original building a tower house of three storeys, with a projecting wing at the south-east and a square tower at the north-west. The listing makes it three storeys and an attic, a three-bay centre, a sixteenth-century five-storey square tower at the south-east, and a two-storey crenellated dining-room wing at the west gable with angle bartizans, that wing dated about 1954. A field note of 4 April 1982 corrected an older orientation: the square wing is at the south-east corner, and the smaller square stair tower is at the north-west and is the same height as the main block, not a storey higher. The main block lies east to west, with thick walls and gun loops, and a massive chimney stack at the east end. A curtain-walled courtyard lies to the north, entered by a round-arched gateway. The date 1762 is cut above the arch into that courtyard. The original entrance was on the north. The nineteenth-century entrance is on the south. The north courtyard arch is described as unaltered. Gun slits run through the ground floor, in the angles of the tower, and at first-floor level. Seen from a distance, the turrets are striking. The smaller turrets have chequered corbelling. The parapet of the large turret sits on winged cherub heads, like those at Carberry Tower in Midlothian. The earliest form has also been read as a five-storey square tower with bartizans at the wall-head and a lower wing of five bays. The courtyard walls abut the main structure, look secondary, and have been rebuilt.

What happened to the sons is told in two ways, and both have to be kept. The castle’s own history says the house was built for the second son, William Sinclair. In 1573, while visiting the family seat at Girnigoe, William was murdered by his elder brother John, who had been imprisoned there for about six years by their father. John had been planning an escape. William found out and told their father. John was in turn murdered, and the castle went to the third son, George Sinclair, who founded the Sinclairs of Mey. A descendant of that George succeeded to the earldom in 1789 and changed the name to Barrogill Castle. The house then became the seat of the earls for the next hundred years.

The earl’s own family record tells a different story of the same men. John Sinclair, Master of Caithness, the eldest son, received the charter of the earldom and his male heirs on 2 October 1545. In July 1569 he besieged Lord Oliphant and his servants for eight days in Old Wick, also called Auldwick, near Wick. In 1570 the Battle of Torran-Roy was fought between George, 4th Earl, and Alexander Gordon, 12th Earl of Sutherland. Caithness was at first defeated by Sutherland’s vassals, the Murrays of Aberscross. He returned, besieged the Murrays at Dornoch, and several of them were beheaded. John was later imprisoned by his father for making peace with the Murrays. He died at Castle Sinclair Girnigoe in 1576, apparently of famine and vermin, the older spelling being vermine. Food was withheld for a few days, then he was given heavily salted beef, which brought on a raging thirst, and water was refused. Murdoch Roy was accused of planning the escape and was hanged. The remains were buried in the Sinclair Aisle in the churchyard of Wick, which the father had built. The inscription says that John, Master of Caithness, departed this life on the 15th day of March 1576. Around 1566 John married Jean Hepburn, daughter of Patrick Hepburn, 3rd Earl of Bothwell. Their children included George Sinclair, 5th Earl of Caithness.

In that family record William Sinclair is the first laird of Mey and the ancestor of the Sinclairs of Ulbster. His son William was at the High School in Edinburgh in 1595 and shot John MacMorran. A brother, George Sinclair of Mey, is named as Chancellor of Caithness. The listing of the castle says the house passed to the second son, William, who founded the line of Sinclair of Mey. The name was afterwards changed to Barrogill, and it returned to Castle of Mey when the Queen Mother bought it. So William is, in one account, murdered in 1573 before he could found the line, and in another the first laird and the founder. George the third son is, in one account, the founder after the murder, and in the family list a further son, the chancellor. The 4th Earl also obtained a remission to imprison his younger brother David Sinclair in Castle Sinclair Girnigoe.

George, 4th Earl, died at Edinburgh on 9 September 1582 and was buried in Rosslyn Chapel, at the west end of the north aisle. At his own request his heart was taken out, cased in a lead casket, sent to Caithness, and laid in the church at Wick. Among his children, a daughter called Barbara or Beatrix married Alexander Gordon, 12th Earl of Sutherland, and divorced him by 1573, so the man who fought the earl in 1570 was also his son-in-law. Other daughters married into Duffus, Strathnaver, Innes, Erroll, and Foulis. General Arthur St. Clair of the American Revolutionary War was reportedly descended from this earl.

The next century is a story of debt. The 4th Earl’s grandson George lost the fortunes of the estate. They were regained by 1628 and lost again in 1672 by the 6th Earl. In October 1672 John Campbell of Glenorchy, principal creditor of George Sinclair, 6th Earl of Caithness, obtained the inheritance of the lands and properties. The 6th Earl was the son of John Sinclair, Master of Berriedale, and of Jean, daughter of Colin Mackenzie, 1st Earl of Seaforth. He was served heir on 21 March 1644, succeeding his great-grandfather. After the Restoration he was a royalist, active against the Covenanters, a privy councillor, and lord lieutenant of Caithness. He was present with the Marquess of Argyll when Oliver Cromwell was proclaimed chief magistrate over the cross at Elgin. He married Mary, daughter of Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll, and had no children. He died at Thurso Castle in 1676. On 3 May 1676 the minister of Thurso told the presbytery that the earl, visited with heavy sickness, asked the brethren to remember him in public and private prayer. The earldom was deep in debt. He had transferred the estates and the title to Campbell. On Sinclair’s death Campbell was created Earl of Caithness by patent.

Campbell, later called Slippery John, was born in 1636 and died on 19 March 1717. In 1678 he married the widowed countess, Mary Campbell, which one life of him calls an economical step that saved him an obligation. George Sinclair of Keiss, whose father Francis Sinclair of Northfield was a younger son of the 5th Earl, challenged the title. On 13 July 1680 Campbell took eight hundred men north to evict Sinclair of Keiss, who waited near Wick with five hundred. The Sinclairs, inflamed with drink, attacked and were routed at the Battle of Altimarlach. A legend says so many Sinclairs were killed that the Campbells crossed the river without wetting their feet. In 1681 the Privy Council proclaimed in favour of Sinclair of Keiss, who became 7th Earl of Caithness, and Campbell was created Earl of Breadalbane and Holland. A designed-landscape history gives a further, later act: in 1685 James II overruled Campbell’s claim and restored the title to the Sinclairs. James II and VII reigned from February 1685 until the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The earls of the Sinclair line are then said to have remained lairds of Barrogill until 1889.

The garden is older than the nineteenth-century planting. William Lithgow in 1628 is said to have called the west garden “greenfaced gardens”. An account of 1762 describes plenty of apples, strawberries, and cherries prospering inside the walls despite the climate. The west garden is thought to be the older of the two, enclosed on all four sides, though the date of the walls is uncertain. It is now laid out in eight compartments, as on a map of about 1910, divided by hedges of berberis, elder, privet, and hawthorn, with vegetables, herbs, soft fruit, and flowers, a rose garden at the north end, and two small modern greenhouses for propagation and pot plants. Roy’s map of 1747 to 1755 shows the castle, named Mey, on a U-plan with wings toward the north, a tight boundary wall, a building inside the wall on the north side, and a larger bounded area to the south that is read as a garden. Roy’s map is schematic and not always accurate in detail, but it usually shows a designed landscape when one existed.

The name Barrogill is itself disputed in date. One account has the 4th Earl calling the new tower Barrogill in 1567. Another says the name was changed to Barrogill after the house had passed to the Mey line, with extensions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The castle’s own history puts the change in 1789, when the Mey descendant succeeded to the earldom. A later spelling, Barrogil, with one l, appears in a 2009 telling of the Queen Mother’s purchase. The queen restored the older name, Castle of Mey.

William Burn altered the house in the nineteenth century. He was born on 20 December 1789 in Rose Street, Edinburgh, the fourth of sixteen children of the architect Robert Burn and Janet Patterson, and he died on 15 February 1870, aged 80, at 6 Stratton Street, Piccadilly. He is buried at Kensal Green. He trained with Sir Robert Smirke in London from 1808, returned to Edinburgh in 1812, and made his name with North Leith Parish Church. He lost the competition to finish Robert Adam’s Old College to William Henry Playfair in 1816, and he turned to country houses. He was a pioneer of the Scottish Baronial Revival, though the houses usually named for that, such as Helen’s Tower, Castlewellan, and Balintore, are later than Mey. David Bryce became his pupil in 1825 and his partner in 1841. In 1827 Burn was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and became Grand Architect of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, a post he held until 1844.

At Mey the dates of his work are 1819 and 1821. The castle’s own history says the 12th Earl commissioned him in 1819 for ambitious alterations, and that this was when the grand entrance and the dining room were added. The designed-landscape record says that in 1819 he designed the entrance porch and hall. A field account says considerable work about 1819 was Tudor Gothic, including a porch, a two-storey west wing, and crenellation, and that pointed bartizan caps were replaced by crenellated turrets. The place’s general history puts Tudor Gothic alterations, to his designs, in 1821. William Daniell’s Voyage round Great Britain of 1818 shows the building shortly before that programme. The listing says the Burn addition of 1819 was largely removed during the alterations of the 1950s. That is one side of a disagreement about the west wing, set out below.

The 12th Earl’s son Alexander put up the monument now called Lady Fanny’s Seat, as a tribute to his friend Charles John Canning, who later became the first viceroy of India.

The east garden is tied to the 14th Earl and to a glasshouse, and here too the accounts part. The designed-landscape record thinks the 14th Earl instrumental in that garden. It says the central feature was a reproduction of the glasshouse of the 1851 exhibition, which that record calls the Empire Exhibition. An article of the early 1850s describes the glasshouse as well stocked with purple cinerarias and red and white camellias, with a vine over the inner walls. It was derelict by the 1950s, removed, and replaced by a bed of primulas, with a herbaceous border along the south face of the wall next to the castle, separated from the old glasshouse site by a fuchsia hedge. A study of May 2025 says this is not entirely right. A building and a circular garden were already on an estate map dated 1836, hung in the castle, so they are earlier than 1851. The 14th Earl seems to have built a new glasshouse into an existing setting, presumably after 1851. By the 1966 map the glasshouse, its circular boundary, and its radial paths had gone. The 2025 study says the primula bed itself has long vanished, and that the place now has young trees and a central clearing. The 1836 map shows dense trees south of the house, an open avenue running south into a semi-circular clearing with three trees, open ground to the north, a large walled garden to the west with square divisions, and, east of the avenue, a rectangular building inside a circular boundary with radial paths. The Ordnance Survey map of 1872 shows a lodge to the south-west and a garden building of irregular plan, not square to the rest of the site. The 1905 map hatches that building as glazed and drops the radial paths, which may be a change of drawing rather than of ground.

The present designed landscape is placed between 1750 and 1875, probably about 1820, after the Burn addition. It is compared on the first-edition map of 1873, also cited as 1875, with the second edition of 1910, and it is said to have stayed substantially the same. Replanting and garden improvements are dated to 1928 and to the years after 1952. The inventory date is 1 July 1987 in the designation, and 30 June 1987 in the general history of the castle. The record calls the landscape outstanding for its association with the earls and with the royal family, outstanding as the setting of a Category A castle, and outstanding in the scenery, with some horticultural value because plants are grown in a harsh climate, and some nature-conservation value because woodland is scarce here. The measured parts are about one hundred acres, or 40.5 hectares, of parkland, 11.64 acres, or 4.7 hectares, of woodland, and 2.68 acres, or 1.08 hectares, of formal garden, including 1.25 acres, or half a hectare, of walled gardens. At the purchase in 1952 the policies are also given as only about thirty acres, in poor condition. Those figures are not the same, and both are recorded.

The woodland is mostly sycamore and ash, with horse chestnut, copper beech, and gean brought into the more sheltered parts. Wind has stunted the trees. A shelter belt along the northern edge of the public road was replanted in 1939 and is not part of the castle property. In spring the woodland floors carry daffodils, primroses, aconites, and celandines. Two round clumps, mainly sycamore and ash, stand in the park south of the house. The park is grazed by the Aberdeen Angus herd. Between the castle and the stable block to the north, a mill lade runs past the home farm and the stables and into the sea due north of the castle. Since 1952 it has been dammed in two places, making two ponds separated by a race. Crenellated walls flank the south entrance. Cannons on the lawns are described as relics of the Napoleonic wars, originally part of the armament of the fort on the cliff to the north-west. A separate coastal artillery battery of about 1866 stands about six hundred metres north-west of the castle, and a study of the proposed garden building found no shared view between that battery and the proposal site. The Great Wall of Mey, twelve feet high, protects the walled garden and the park from gale and salt spray.

The gate lodge and gate piers are early nineteenth century, possibly by William Burn. The lodge is a single storey with a canted west gable toward the drive, harled rubble, ashlar margins, and three pointed windows in the canted gable. The gate piers are square rubble with shallow pyramidal caps. They were listed Category B on 28 November 1984. The castle and garden walls were listed Category A on 13 April 1971.

George, 15th Earl of Caithness, died in 1889. The castle’s history says he was thirty, had never married, had no children, and left the castle to his friend F. G. Heathcote on condition that Heathcote take the name Sinclair. F. G. Heathcote was Frederick Granville Heathcote, born on 8 December 1857 to the Reverend Robert Boothby Heathcote and Elizabeth Bridget Wells, and he died on 16 March 1914. He took a master of arts at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1885. On 18 October 1888, aged thirty-one, he married Agnes Charlotte Barnes, daughter of Thomas J. Barnes. In 1889, as a condition of inheriting the castle, then known as Barrogill Castle, he and his wife legally took the surname Sinclair. He was deputy lieutenant of Caithness and a justice of the peace for Cambridge and for Caithness. He was a zoologist, especially of myriapods, and he published on an expedition to the Malay Peninsula, on insects, on Peripatus, and in elementary zoology. Forty-one works in ninety publications are attributed to him. The castle’s history says the widow eventually sold the house to Captain F. B. Imbert-Terry. The earl had no wife, so that widow is read as Heathcote’s. The purchase by the captain is dated 1928 in the designed-landscape record and 1929 in the general history, which gives his name as Captain Frederic Bouhier Imbert-Terry. He replanted the shelter woods and improved the gardens. The earls had been lairds until 1889, when the last earl of that line left the castle outside the family.

During the Second World War the castle was an officers’ rest home, and one account says it was used as troop accommodation, with little maintenance, and was badly damaged by a storm. The grounds were neglected. The Second World War ran from 1 September 1939 to 2 September 1945. Britain entered it after the invasion of Poland. King George VI was on the throne. He had been born Albert Frederick Arthur George on 14 December 1895 at York Cottage on the Sandringham estate, and he was known as Bertie. He was not expected to reign. His elder brother Edward VIII abdicated in 1936, and Albert took the regnal name King George VI. His coronation was in 1937. He had married Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon in 1923, and they had two daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret. During the war Buckingham Palace was bombed while the king and queen were there. He died at Sandringham House on 6 February 1952, aged fifty-six, of a coronary thrombosis, and his elder daughter succeeded as Elizabeth II. In 1950 the estate farms and crofts were sold to tenants. By then only the tower was habitable. The castle and the policies were for sale.

In 1952 Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother bought the house. The castle’s history says she saw Barrogill while staying with Commander and Lady Doris Vyner at the House of the Northern Gate on Dunnet Head, a short distance west, and that she bought it that year despite its poor condition. A 2009 account of the months after King George VI’s death says that in June 1952, while being driven along the coast road toward John o' Groats, she saw what she called a romantic-looking castle down by the sea, named there Barrogil, used for troops, little maintained, and hurt by a recent storm. The next day she learned it was going to be pulled down. She wrote that she had seen so much destruction in her life. Captain Imbert-Terry offered to give her the property. She insisted on paying, and a nominal fee of 100 was agreed. It was the only house that ever belonged to her. The Vyners arranged a further purchase of land along the coast at a cost of 300, expected to bring 30 a year in grazing, and old furniture was bought for 124. In early August she wrote to Arthur Penn that she planned to escape there occasionally when life became hideous, and she asked whether he thought her mad. To Queen Mary she wrote that she did not wish the building to crumble away, and that it would be a wrong thing to happen to an interesting old place. Once the deeds were hers she changed Barrogil back to the Castle of Mey. The purchase is also given as about 1953 in the listing. The general history says 1952, and that she removed some of the nineteenth-century additions and brought back the original name.

The policies at purchase are given as about thirty acres, in a poor state, and as renovated between 1953 and 1955. Electricity and water were supplied for the first time. Work in 1953 and 1954 made the house weathertight and habitable, with painting and plastering, and the interior was refurbished over the following years. The west wing restoration is said not to have been finished until 1960. Architects Sinclair Macdonald of Thurso worked for her. One suggestion is that the two-storey west wing, with the dining room at principal-floor level, was entirely of the early 1950s. That complete rebuilding is not fully substantiated. The likelier reading is that the wing was extended by about 1.8 metres in the 1950s, with some original walls kept and new windows at both floors. A carved panel by Hew Lorimer was built into the main front of the wing. The listing places the Queen Mother’s crest, carved by Hew Lorimer about 1954, over the first-floor dining-room window on the west, and says the stone came from a local quarry specially reopened. A scullery block north of the west wing is an addition of about 1958. A caretaker’s house was built at the north-west corner of the courtyard. Robert Beaton of Golspie carried out maintenance and minor works in the 1980s. She hung portraits of earlier earls of Caithness in the house.

She spent three weeks in August at the castle and returned for about ten days in October. Regular visits in August and October ran from 1955 until her death in March 2002. The last visit was in October 2001. She opened the gardens for Scotland’s Gardens Scheme on three days each year, and the trustees have continued that custom. The gardens were meant to be at their best for the August and October visits.

The rooms, as a 2009 account gives them, put the drawing room on the raised ground floor, facing north to the sea and Orkney, with a large sixteenth-century Flemish wool tapestry on the north wall and a peat fire kept burning while she was in residence. She called the library her Hunka-Munka room and dealt with correspondence there at a desk of photographs of the king. Her bedroom was up a flight of stone stairs in the turret, and she still reached it at the end of her life. It was modest, with blue bed covers and a blue headboard. A room called Princess Margaret’s bedroom was not used as such, because the princess did not much like what she called her mother’s draughty castle. In the hall a chronometer from George V’s racing yacht Britannia struck the bells of the watch rather than the hours. A large clam-shell jardiniere, bought at Miss Miller Calder’s shop in Thurso, stood in the front hall and was filled with flowers when the queen was there. Local farmers who came to see the cattle and sheep were given tea, chocolate cake, and drams in the drawing room. August brought grouse shooting. Lunch was a picnic in any weather. The keeper, only six months younger than his employer, organised the shooting into his nineties. When the queen arrived for her Scottish holiday, the Royal Yacht Britannia anchored off Scrabster and the family were driven over. After lunch the queen often led a party to the beach to clear rubbish and make a bonfire. In the evening, coastguards brought time-expired maroons and flares from the north of Scotland and let them off as the yacht passed toward Aberdeen. The queen and her mother exchanged comic verses by ship-to-shore radio through the coastguard. The Reverend Alex Muir of Canisbay Church, where the Queen Mother had her own pew, played the guitar in the pulpit and sometimes at the castle. She is described as loving Caithness because it was Scotland and yet a part of Scotland with no memories of happier days with King George VI. She saw the castle as emblematic of her own life. Newspapers arrived too late to be readable, which she counted an advantage of living at the furthest tip of the islands. As a child, Charles III retreated here from the bullying he met at Gordonstoun.

In 1958 she bought Longoe Farm, which had come on the market. It lies on the shore of the Pentland Firth, linked to the castle by a cliff-top track and a strip of rough grazing, and it is among the most northerly farms on the British mainland, with a view to Hoy and Orkney and with Dunnet Head just to the west. More land has brought it to about one hundred hectares, with a further twenty-five hectares of rough grazing rented. The soil is a heavy clay loam. Barley and oats are grown, and wrapped silage is made, with some hay. Cattle are housed from the end of October until the third week of May so that the heavy land is not cut up. Snow and frost are not the main trouble. The northerly wind salts the grass, flattens barley, and bends the surviving trees. She handed the property to the trust in 1996 and still followed the farm and its pedigree stock until her death.

The Aberdeen Angus is a Scottish breed of small beef cattle from the counties of Aberdeen, Banff, Kincardine, and Angus. Hornless cattle there were called Angus Doddies and Buchan Humlies. William McCombie of Tillyfour began to improve the stock in 1824 and is regarded as the father of the breed. It was officially recognised in 1835, first registered with the Galloway in the Polled Herd Book, and given a breed society in 1879. The cattle are naturally polled and solid black or red. In 2018 the breed accounted for over seventeen percent of beef production in the United Kingdom. Worldwide it is not at risk. In the United Kingdom the original native animals, those not influenced by imported stock, are listed as at risk. The Queen Mother had known the breed from her early days at Glamis. In August 1937 she became joint patron of the Aberdeen Angus Cattle Society with King George VI, and she remained patron until her death in 2002, nearly sixty-five years. The former Duke of Rothesay succeeded her as patron. The Castle of Mey herd was founded in 1964. The breeding aim is cattle of size, character, and quality. In 1987 semen from the American sire 4S Pondeosa was used. A heifer from that crop, Castle of Mey Evening Star 44th, was second at Perth in February 1990, the first sale in the new mart, and sold for the top breed price of 5,000 guineas. She became the great-grandmother of the bull Rawburn Elysium. Castle of Mey Princess 12th, a two-year-old heifer, was breed champion and interbreed cattle champion at the Caithness Show in 1989. In 1991 at the Royal Highland Show she was reserve female champion and won the Tangier Trophy for the best animal bred by the exhibitor. She was interbreed champion at the Caithness Show and reserve interbreed champion at the Black Isle Show. In 1992 she was second cow at the Royal Highland Show, reserve interbreed champion at the Caithness Show, and reserve breed champion at the Black Isle Show. In 1993 she was reserve breed champion at the Royal Highland Show and again won the Tangier Trophy. Castle of Mey Elscot, by Geis Gambler, sold for the highest breed price of 8,000 guineas at Perth in October 1996. His first nine sons sold for around 7,400 pounds, and sons worked in seven pedigree herds. The herd numbers forty breeding females. Most male calves are castrated and sold at Dingwall. The best heifers are kept.

She was also patron of the North Country Cheviot Sheep Society and established the Longoe flock in 1960. She wrote that she considered it the best breed of sheep, with no reason to change her mind, because it thrived on all kinds of ground and in all weathers. Sheep from the flock have won the breed championship nine times at the Royal Highland Show. In 1991 the shearling ewe Longoe H3 won the breed title, the supreme interbreed sheep championship among 2,500 entries, and the Queen’s Cup, so that her daughter’s trophy was presented to the Queen Mother by her granddaughter, Princess Anne. In 1996, at the society’s fiftieth anniversary show, with a record 245 entries, the shearling ram Longoe Majestic won. The ewe Longoe S53 won the interbreed sheep title at the Caithness Show in 1998, 1999, and 2000, and the breed championship at the Royal Highland Show in 2000. A hill flock of the same breed was added in 2006. In 2017 the two-shear ram Longoe Transformer sold for 3,000 pounds at the Dingwall hill Cheviot ram sale. The flock numbers 110 ewes. The trust’s mandate includes the native breeds of Aberdeen Angus and Cheviot sheep.

On 11 June 1996 a deed of trust created the Queen Elizabeth Castle of Mey Trust. In July 1996 she made over the property, the policies, and the farm, with an endowment. The castle’s own account says the gift was in 1996, after ownership from 1952. The president was the then Prince of Wales. The mandate was to secure the future of the building, to advance historical and architectural education, to develop the Aberdeen Angus and the Cheviot sheep, and to undertake projects for the local community. After 2002 the trust opened the castle for five months each summer. A new visitor centre opened in early 2007, and that year there were 29,000 visitors. In 2018 nearly 30,000 visits were recorded. Maintenance that year included roof repairs, rewiring of the interior, and lime harling of the exterior.

Charles III was born Charles Philip Arthur George at 9:14 in the evening on 14 November 1948 at Buckingham Palace, during the reign of his grandfather King George VI. He became heir apparent when his mother acceded in 1952, and with that he became Duke of Cornwall and, in Scotland, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, and Prince and Great Steward of Scotland. He was created Prince of Wales in 1958, and the investiture was in 1969. He was educated at Cheam and at Gordonstoun, which is the school from which, as a boy, he withdrew to Mey. He married Camilla Parker Bowles in 2005. He became king on the death of his mother in 2022, at the age of seventy-three, the oldest person to accede to the British throne, after the longest service as heir apparent and as Prince of Wales. His coronation was in 2023.

Queen Camilla was born Camilla Rosemary Shand on 17 July 1947. From the marriage in 2005 until the accession she was Duchess of Cornwall. On 8 September 2022 she became queen consort, and the coronation at Westminster Abbey was on 6 May 2023. The castle’s public season is tied to their stay. One account says the house is open seven days a week from 1 May until 30 September, with a closed period of ten days at the end of July and the beginning of August, when Charles III and Queen Camilla usually stay. The 2026 opening is different in the detail. The castle and gardens are open Wednesday to Sunday from 1 May to 30 September 2026, and closed completely from 24 July to 11 August inclusive. The castle opens from 11.00, with last admission at 15.00. The gardens, grounds, animal centre, tearoom, and shop open from 10.30 until 16.00. A visitor sees the front hall, the library, the equerry’s room, the drawing room, the dining room, the butler’s pantry, and the kitchen. No photography is allowed in the castle. Dogs may be in the grounds on a lead, and not in the castle, the walled garden, the visitor centre, or the animal centre.

On 1 January 2019 stewardship of the trust passed to the then Prince’s Foundation, later the King’s Foundation, whose president is Charles III. From that day he has been president of the Castle of Mey Trust and its sole trustee, through the foundation. The foundation said it would keep the preservation of buildings and monuments, historical and architectural education, the Aberdeen Angus breed, and wider benefits to the community, and that the continuation of his grandmother’s legacy would be a priority. In early May 2019 the then Prince of Wales formally opened Granary Lodge, a ten-bedroom bed and breakfast made from the former stables and granary, with eco-heating and, where possible, local materials and craftsmen. Guests were to be accepted from 15 May 2019. The business is owned and run by the trust, and the profits are for the upkeep of the estate. In January 2023 the castle tearoom was reported as opening to the public every Tuesday until March as a warming centre, an initiative of the King’s Foundation.

The purchase is featured in episode 8 of the first season of The Crown, titled Pride and Joy. The ruins of Barrogill Castle are the scene of a black mass in the novel Spy Castle, of 1966, in the Nick Carter-Killmaster series. Those are later uses of the story and of the name. They are not a record of the fabric.

In May 2025 a heritage statement was prepared for a proposed single-storey garden building, called a folly, south-east of the castle, on the site of the lost glasshouse garden. John Sanders visited in March 2025. The statement treats the castle as Category A and the grounds as an inventory landscape. It expects a limited effect on views, because mature planting already closes the sightline from due south and due north, and it judges the proposal a benefit to the setting because it would replant a garden and support visits. It also says any archaeological evidence should be recorded, and that groundbreaking could meet Neolithic material even though later paths, planting, and buildings overlie it. Paths, planting, and buildings from at least the early nineteenth century are what the maps actually prove. No list of finds from a completed excavation of that spot is given, because the statement is a proposal, not a finished dig. The castle is not described in these records as a World Heritage inscription. Its protection on the public list is the Category A listing of 13 April 1971 and the designed-landscape entry of 30 June 1987 and 1 July 1987.

Canonical page: https://getsitesee.com/places/castle-of-mey