# Drumlanrig Castle

castle in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, UK

Dumfries and Galloway, United Kingdom

Palace · Fortification

## Story

• Drumlanrig Castle stands on the Queensberry Estate above the River Nith, the Dumfriesshire seat of the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch and Queensberry.
• A fourteenth-century Douglas stronghold was rebuilt in the early seventeenth century and transformed from 1679 into a pink sandstone courtyard palace of 120 rooms, 17 turrets and four towers.
• William Douglas, made duke in 1684, drove that rebuilding, with James Smith directing the work and advice sought from Sir William Bruce.
• A Roman fort south-east of the house was traced from the air in 1984 and tested in June 2004, and the finds were read as Antonine.
• Leonardo’s Madonna of the Yarnwinder hung here from 1767 until it was stolen in 2003, recovered in Glasgow in 2007, and lent away for display.

## Visiting

Castle tour tickets are £18 for an adult, £15 for a concession over 60, and £9 for a child aged 5 to 16, and tickets must be booked online. Gardens and adventure playground admission is £8 for an adult, £6 for a child, and £7 for a concession, with children under 5 free, and those tickets should be booked online. The gardens are open from 28 February to 31 October 2026, from 09:30 to 16:30, and a separate notice gives reopening on 1 March. The castle is closed on days without a published tour.
Castle tour times are 11:00, 12:00, 13:00, 14:00, 15:00 and 16:00, the first Saturday tour opens at 11:30, and September tours are also given as 11:00, 13:00 and 15:00. September castle tours are open from Friday 10 July in one account, and are also open on the 5th and 6th and the 12th and 13th, with tours also open through Sunday 14 September. A Halloween castle tour ticket on 31 October is £20, and a combined evening-trail ticket is £35. Accompanying carers are offered free entry tickets when documentation is brought, and member pass cards are accepted for tickets.
Walks are open all year from 07:00 to 19:00, with a daily parking charge of £2.50.

## History

Drumlanrig Castle is the Dumfriesshire home of the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch and Queensberry, on the Queensberry Estate above the River Nith. The pink sandstone front, also called finely hewn red sandstone, is a late seventeenth-century courtyard palace around an older Douglas castle, with 120 rooms, 17 turrets and four towers. The house is listed in category A, the date given as 2 August 1971 and as 3 August 1971. The designed landscape was added to the inventory on 30 June 1987 and on 1 July 1987.

The name is recorded in 1374 as Drumlangryg, read as a ridge and a clearing, or as a long ridge. A Douglas stronghold is placed here in the fourteenth century after a grant from Robert the Bruce, with land held from at least 1388 and a castle named on 29 May 1429. The first laird is William, son of the man killed at Otterburn in 1388, called James, 2nd Earl of Drumlanrig in the house account and James, 2nd Earl of Douglas in the battle account. James Douglas, 7th Lord, who died in 1578, is said to have built the whole house, and vaults, gun-holes and a wall about 2.5 metres thick remain from that work.

William Douglas, born in 1637, was 3rd Earl of Queensberry and is also called 3rd Earl of Drumlanrig. He was made duke on 3 November 1684 and transformed the house from 1679, the finish placed anywhere from 1689 to 1698. James Smith directed the building over William Lukup, while Sir William Bruce, the king’s architect from about 1630 to 1710, was asked to advise on an earlier repair memorandum and was not alive to draw the 1618 scheme. The cost nearly ruined the duke.

One account gives him a single night in the new house before a return to Sanquhar, and he died on 28 March 1695 at Queensberry House in Edinburgh.

His son James, 2nd duke, finished roofs, the oak stair and garden work through 1698 and backed the union of the parliaments. Charles, 3rd duke, died in 1778, and William, 4th duke, felled most of the mature trees in 1810. The dukedom then passed to Henry, 3rd Duke of Buccleuch. Walter Francis, 5th duke, spent the 65 years after 1819 restoring the castle and the park.

A Roman fort on the terrace to the south-east, some 350 yards or 400 metres from the house, was seen from the air in 1984 and tested from 9 to 11 June 2004. The finds are Antonine, dated 139 to 165 or the 140s to the 170s, and a suggested Flavian fort was not shown. A watching brief in 2021, for a ticket office and a deck, found no significant archaeology.

Leonardo’s Madonna of the Yarnwinder hung here from 1767 until it was stolen in August 2003 and recovered in Glasgow on 4 October 2007. It is on loan for display, the loan dated 2008 and 2009, and it remains away as of 2026. Rembrandt’s An Old Woman Reading is the picture given pride of place in the rooms. Walking routes were closed in 2021 after damage from Storm Arwen, which was named on 25 November 2021.

Tibbers Castle, the ruined motte east of the garden, is a separate medieval castle that was once mistaken for a Roman fort.

## Photographs

- [O Castelo de Drumlanrig, em 1880. — Unknown author Unknown author](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Castelodedrumlanrig.jpg)
- [This is a photo of listed building number — Fotis Constantinidis](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/DrumlanrigCastle.jpg)
- [Approach to Drumlanrig Castle — Darrin Antrobus](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Approach_to_Drumlanrig_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_981639.jpg)
- [Countryside and River Nith near Drumlanrig — Darrin Antrobus](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Countryside_and_River_Nith_near_Drumlanrig_-_geograph.org.uk_-_981650.jpg)
- [Drumlanrig Castle Another fuller frame view of the Castle from the south. — John Clive Nicholson](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Drumlanrig_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1098091.jpg)
- [Chimney for Drumlanrig Castle Old Chimney from Drumlanrig castle in woods some distance from castle — Alex McEwen](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Chimney_for_Drumlanrig_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1241875.jpg)
- [Courtyard, Drumlanrig Castle Drumlanrig Castle is a popular visitor attraction. The courtyard hosts a number of craft shops and food stalls. — Oliver Dixon](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Courtyard%2C_Drumlanrig_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1328161.jpg)
- [Cycle Museum, Drumlanrig Castle Kirkpatrick Macmillan (1812-1878) is one of the world's great unsung heroes. In the 1830s whilst working in the forge at the — Oliver Dixon](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Cycle_Museum%2C_Drumlanrig_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1328151.jpg)
- [Cycle museum, Drumlanrig Castle Kirkpatrick Macmillan (1812-1878) is one of the world's great unsung heroes. In the 1830s whilst working in the forge at the — Oliver Dixon](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Cycle_museum%2C_Drumlanrig_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1328147.jpg)
- [Drumlanrig Castle Drumlanrig Castle, built in the late 17th century is the seat of the Dukes of Buccleuch. A very popular visitor attraction, in addition to — Oliver Dixon](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Drumlanrig_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1328136.jpg)

## Sources

- [Drumlanrig Castle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drumlanrig_Castle) — Wikipedia
- [William Douglas, 1st Duke of Queensberry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Douglas,_1st_Duke_of_Queensberry) — Wikipedia
- [William Bruce (architect)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bruce_(architect)) — Wikipedia
- [Madonna of the Yarnwinder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_of_the_Yarnwinder) — Wikipedia
- [Tibbers Castle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibbers_Castle) — Wikipedia
- [Amisfield Tower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amisfield_Tower) — Wikipedia
- [Bonshaw Tower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonshaw_Tower) — Wikipedia
- [Drumcoltran Tower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drumcoltran_Tower) — Wikipedia
- [Gilnockie Tower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilnockie_Tower) — Wikipedia
- [Balmangan Tower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balmangan_Tower) — Wikipedia
- [Storm Arwen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_Arwen) — Wikipedia
- [John Clerk of Penicuik](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Clerk_of_Penicuik) — Wikipedia
- [The transformation of Drumlanrig Castle at the end of the seventeenth century](https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/47606/7/Gonzalez_Longo_FCHC_2014_The_transformation_of_Drumlanrig_castle_at_the_end.pdf) — University of Strathclyde
- [Drumlanrig Castle Roman fort evaluation](https://www.wessexarch.co.uk/our-work/drumlanrig-castle) — Wessex Archaeology
- [Drumlanrig Castle, outbuildings and garden walls](https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/apex/f?p=1505:300:::::VIEWTYPE,VIEWREF:designation,LB3886) — Historic Environment Scotland
- [Drumlanrig Castle designed landscape](https://www.trove.scot/designation/GDL00143) — Historic Environment Scotland
- [Drumlanrig Roman fort and annexe](https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/apex/f?p=1505:300:::::VIEWTYPE,VIEWREF:designation,SM13711) — Historic Environment Scotland
- [The Pink Palace](https://www.drumlanrigcastle.co.uk/drumlanrig-castle/) — Drumlanrig Castle
- [Plan your visit](https://www.drumlanrigcastle.co.uk/plan-a-visit/) — Drumlanrig Castle
- [Castle tours](https://www.drumlanrigcastle.co.uk/attraction/tour-a-scottish-castle/) — Drumlanrig Castle
- [Castle gardens](https://www.drumlanrigcastle.co.uk/attraction/castle-gardens-to-visit/) — Drumlanrig Castle
- [Halloween castle tours](https://www.drumlanrigcastle.co.uk/event/castle-tours-halloween/) — Drumlanrig Castle
- [The Madonna of the Yarnwinder](https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/94762/madonna-yarnwinder) — National Galleries of Scotland
- [Drumlanrig Castle](https://blht.org/drumlanrig-castle/) — Buccleuch Living Heritage Trust
- [Drumlanrig Castle](https://www.scottish-places.info/features/featurefirst1204.html) — Gazetteer for Scotland
- [Drumlanrig Castle](https://www.douglashistory.co.uk/history/Places/drumlanrig.htm) — Douglas History
- [Buccleuch family Leonardo found](https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2007/11/01/buccleuch-family-leonardo-found) — The Art Newspaper
- [Drumlanrig Castle archaeological monitoring](https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/data-catalogue/resource/eb11d50e87b59e30b0ae97f670db2dbe163c301d960afeb3a0063e1e64b75936) — Archaeology Data Service
- [Castelodedrumlanrig.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castelodedrumlanrig.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [DrumlanrigCastle.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DrumlanrigCastle.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Approach to Drumlanrig Castle - geograph.org.uk - 981639.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Approach_to_Drumlanrig_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_981639.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Countryside and River Nith near Drumlanrig - geograph.org.uk - 981650.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Countryside_and_River_Nith_near_Drumlanrig_-_geograph.org.uk_-_981650.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Drumlanrig Castle - geograph.org.uk - 1098091.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Drumlanrig_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1098091.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Chimney for Drumlanrig Castle - geograph.org.uk - 1241875.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chimney_for_Drumlanrig_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1241875.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Courtyard, Drumlanrig Castle - geograph.org.uk - 1328161.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Courtyard,_Drumlanrig_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1328161.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Cycle Museum, Drumlanrig Castle - geograph.org.uk - 1328151.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cycle_Museum,_Drumlanrig_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1328151.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Cycle museum, Drumlanrig Castle - geograph.org.uk - 1328147.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cycle_museum,_Drumlanrig_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1328147.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Drumlanrig Castle - geograph.org.uk - 1328136.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Drumlanrig_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1328136.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons

## Detailed history

Drumlanrig Castle stands on the Queensberry Estate in Durisdeer parish, above the River Nith in upper Nithsdale, Dumfries and Galloway. The house is the Dumfriesshire seat of the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch and Queensberry. It is called the Pink Palace because the stone reads as pink, and the estate account also calls that stone finely hewn red sandstone. The present front is a late seventeenth-century Renaissance courtyard palace wrapped around an older Douglas castle. It is not a world-heritage inscription. The castle, its outbuildings, pavilion blocks, piers, balustrades, quadrant walls and garden urns are listed in category A, the date of listing given as 3 August 1971 and also as 2 August 1971. The designed landscape was added to the inventory of gardens on 30 June 1987 and on 1 July 1987. That landscape is given as 5,004 acres, or 2,025 hectares, and does not take in the whole valley. The gardens themselves are now described as 40 acres. From the house the view runs over the Lowther Hills to the east and south toward Criffel, given as 1,868 feet or 570 metres, on the Solway, with a shorter view north-west to Cairnkinna, given as 1,817 feet or 553 metres. The policies are placed about 3 miles, or 5 kilometres, north of Thornhill and about 17 miles north of Dumfries, and also 18 miles, or 28 kilometres, north-north-west of Dumfries and 16 miles, or 25 kilometres, west of Moffat. The building is counted at 120 rooms, 17 turrets and four towers. An early plan shows the front extending 145 feet, or 44 metres. The angle towers rise five storeys, and the ranges between them are one storey lower.

The name is on record in 1374, spelled Drumlangryg. One reading takes it as Cumbric drum, a ridge, with lanerc, a small clearing of woodland. Another takes the first element as Gaelic druim, a ridge, joined either to an older Cumbric name or to Scots lang-rigg, a long ridge. A family account puts the same idea in plain words: a hill, drum, at the end of a long ridge, rig, overlooking Nithsdale. The Douglas family are said to have been granted land in Nithsdale by Robert the Bruce and to have raised a stronghold on this site in the fourteenth century. Ownership of land here is also traced from at least 1388, and a castle on the site is named in an indenture of 29 May 1429. The house account says the story begins when William, son of James, 2nd Earl of Drumlanrig, who died at Otterburn in 1388, became the first laird. The man killed at Otterburn in that year is otherwise James, 2nd Earl of Douglas. The arms carry a winged heart under a crown, for the heart of Robert the Bruce, which Sir James Douglas, called the Good and the Black Douglas, was taking toward the Holy Land when he was killed fighting in Spain. A tour of the house also ties those Douglas roots to the story of Braveheart.

The first castle, read from remains and from a plan of 1608, was a rectangular barmkin with four ranges around a courtyard and the north-west tower as the keep. An inventory at the death of James Douglas, 7th Lord of Drumlanrig, who lived from 1498 to 1578, says that he built the whole house and palace of Drumlanrig. By then the north and west ranges had the look of a tower house, with a turnpike stair in the corner, and further ranges closed the same courtyard that stands today. What still shows from that work includes the north wall of the basement under the terrace, barrel vaults, a ribbed cross vault in the chapter room north of the west quarter, and the vault under the duke’s study. Gun-holes and blocked windows survive low in the east wall. The older masonry is a different colour and tooling, and the east wall is about 2.5 metres thick at the bottom. New windows sit near the top of the old enclosure. A seventeenth-century iron yett remains behind the oak front door. A neighbouring description calls the house a sixteenth-century country house standing north-west of Tibbers.

In 1530 Sir Robert Charteris of Amisfield fought a duel with Sir James Douglas of Drumlanrig. Amisfield Tower, also called Hempisfield Tower, is a separate tower house near Tinwald, about 5 miles or 8 kilometres north of Dumfries, not a part of this castle. A stronghold had probably stood there since the twelfth century. The Charteris family held the land from the thirteenth century, and the present tower is their sixteenth-century building. They feuded with the Kilpatricks of Kirkmichael, and Roger Kilpatrick was murdered in 1526. The tower passed to John Dalziel of Newton in 1636. The Dalziels backed the Stuarts in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, and Captain Alexander Dalziel was executed as a royalist in 1650. The plan is a square of four storeys and an attic, with double-storeyed turrets on three corners and a decked fourth, red ashlar above rubble, shot-holes only in the upper levels, a vaulted basement lit by three gun-loops, and a painted border of lion faces. An oak door dated 1600, carved with Samson tearing a lion’s jaws and with the arms of Charteris and Herries, is displayed in Edinburgh. Hubert Fenwick called the tower simply marvellous and said it displayed almost every Jacobean baronial conceit. A seventeenth-century mansion beside it was doubled in size about 1803. The tower is listed in category A.

Other tower houses in the same south-western county are not this building. Balmangan Tower is a ruined sixteenth-century tower house near Borgue. Bonshaw Tower is an oblong tower, probably of the mid-sixteenth century and also put at about 1570, one mile south of Kirtlebridge above the Kirtle Water, beside a nineteenth-century mansion. It was one of the towers raised on the border in the 1500s against English incursions, and it was the seat of the Irvings of Bonshaw in a succession that a family account calls unbroken until 1954, when Sir Robert Beaufin Irving, a former captain of the Queen Mary, died. It then passed to his nephew, Commander G. R. I. Irving, who sold it to a descendant of the Irvings of Wysebie, and it was later bought by a junior line of the Irvings of Gribton and Dumfries. Summaries say it was burned and blown up by the English in the same century and later rebuilt, with several fights recorded around it. The two-storey house against the tower is put at about 1770 and enlarged from the 1840s, with additions dated 1841 and 1842, a link corridor of 1896, and a crenellated wall rebuilt in 1895. James VI visited Bonshaw in 1601 or 1602, when it was known as Boneschaw. An earlier Bonshaw is spoken of in 1298, when Robert the Bruce took refuge there and the owner is given as Sir William de Irving. The tower has been category A listed since 1971. Drumcoltran Tower, near Kirkgunzeon in the old county of Kirkcudbrightshire, was built by a branch of the Maxwell family around 1570, passed with the estate to the Irvings in 1668, and was altered inside by the Maxwells in the eighteenth century when they built the farm steading. It was designated a scheduled monument in 1928. Gilnockie Tower, first called Hollows Tower, stands at Hollows, 2.2 kilometres north of Canonbie, on the west bank of the Esk. Gilnockie Castle is a separate site nearby. The name Gilnockie is taken from Gaelic Geal Cnocan, little white hill. Hollows was built around 1520 by Johnnie Armstrong, the border outlaw and younger brother of Thomas Armstrong of Mangerton. In 1528 Sir Christopher Dacre, English warden of the Western Marches, burned the tower. In 1530 James V hanged Johnnie and fifty followers after drawing them to a hunting party, the event of the ballad Johnnie Armstrong. The tower was rebuilt, damaged again in English raids of the 1540s, and rebuilt with a parapet walk and a beacon stance. In 1978 it was a roofless ruin, bought by Major T. C. R. Armstrong-Wilson and restored with four floors, oak doors, plaster, water and electricity, in consultation with the ancient-monuments department. It closed for repair in January 2015, the aim being a return toward a sixteenth-century appearance and a safe visitor centre, and on 1 April 2018 Gilnockie Tower and the Clan Armstrong Centre opened, with a furnished hall and the clan museum moved from the Episcopal church in Langholm. It is listed in category A.

East of the walled garden, on the river bank, stand the ruins of Tibbers Castle, a motte and bailey over a ford of the Nith, with Carronbridge to the east. Its origin is undocumented and may be a timber castle of the twelfth or thirteenth century. It is first recorded in 1298, when Sir Richard Siward either built the stone enclosure or strengthened one already added to the timber work, and Edward I of England visited in that same year. In 1302, £100 was spent while a garrison of 23 held it under English control, Siward being sheriff of Dumfries. After the death of Alexander III in 1286 and the crowning of Robert the Bruce in 1306, Bruce’s first campaign took the English-held castles of Ayr, Dalswinton, Inverkip and Tibbers. John de Seton was given Tibbers until the English recaptured it, hanged the defenders, and installed a garrison of 54. The Scots regained the region in 1313. The castle then passed through Thomas Randolph, 1st Earl of Moray, his son the 2nd earl, and John Randolph, 3rd Earl of Moray, who died at Neville’s Cross in 1346, after which it went to Patrick, Earl of March. His son inherited in 1369 and acquired the barony of Morton, which probably became the administrative centre. The Dunbar estates were confiscated by the crown in 1435. In 1450 or 1451 James II gave Tibbers to George Crichton, later 1st Earl of Caithness, and on Crichton’s death in 1454 it returned to the crown. A toun is mentioned in 1451 and was attacked by Sir Alexander Stewart of Garlies in 1547. The Mote de Tibbris is named in 1489 and 1541. It is unclear when the castle fell out of use. By the eighteenth century the ridge was cropped, and part of the structure was demolished for lime and other materials. In that century the site was taken for a Roman fort, and the name was guessed to come from Tiberius. It was later read as a medieval castle, and Tibbers is taken from Gaelic toibar, a well. An excavation in 1864 recovered two coins of Edward II, whose reign is 1307 to 1327, and a dagger of the early fifteenth century. A survey followed in 1912. The site was scheduled in 1937. Measured and geophysical survey, by resistivity and gradiometer, was carried out in 2013 and 2014. The earliest phase was a small bailey with timber buildings. Siward’s work of about 1298 likely added the motte and stone enclosure and replaced the single bailey with two large enclosures south of the motte, perhaps a market as at Lochmaben. The motte summit measures 44 by 27 metres, or 144 by 89 feet. The enclosure on top is about 26.8 by 11.6 metres, or 88 by 38 feet, with a round tower at each corner and an extra tower on the south flanking the entrance. A well stood on the east, and ranges along the west and north likely held hall, kitchens and chamber, with a postern just south of the north-east tower. This phase has been called one of the few authentic remnants of English castle-building in Scotland during the Plantagenet occupation. At greatest extent the site measures 330 by 85 metres, or 1,080 by 279 feet. Each of the outer baileys covers about 0.4 hectares, or 0.99 acres. Ramparts survive about 0.5 metres high and between 3.4 and 5.5 metres wide. The ruin is not open to the public. It is a different place from the Roman fort south-east of Drumlanrig.

William Douglas, 1st Earl of Queensberry and grandfather of the first duke, wanted to change the old house. Plans of 1608 and 1615 show a square courtyard. Two plans of 1618, and a document of that year, propose rebuilding the south quarter and adding corner towers while keeping the north-west tower. The earl asked for estimates for the rebuilding of the south quarter. A letter of 19 April 1622 concerns wood required from David Anderson, burgess of Aberdeen, to Thomas Ballantyne, wright, then at Drumlanrig. James VI was entertained here in 1617 on his return to Scotland. One account of the 1618 sheet says a note suggests that this castle could have been designed by William Bruce, and a later alteration is also reputed to be by Sir William Bruce. The note written on the back of that 1618 plan, in the hand identified as the earl who became the first duke, asks that his grandfather’s memorandum about repairing the house be looked over and advised by Sir William Bruce. A second hand on the same sheet refers to Mr Mills’s draughts for the house and the bridge, and to an estimate for the bridge. Sir William Bruce of Kinross, 1st Baronet, lived from about 1630 to 1710, so he was not alive to draw the 1618 scheme itself. He was a merchant in Rotterdam in the 1650s, carried messages between the exiled Charles II and General Monck in the Restoration of 1659, and was rewarded as Surveyor General of the King’s Works in Scotland, the king’s architect. Howard Colvin called him the effective founder of classical architecture in Scotland, set beside Inigo Jones, Christopher Wren, Hugh May and Sir Roger Pratt. His patrons included John Maitland, 1st Duke of Lauderdale. From the 1660s he remodelled country houses, among them Thirlestane Castle and Prestonfield House, and he built his own Palladian house at Kinross on the Loch Leven estate he bought in 1675. As king’s architect he rebuilt the Palace of Holyroodhouse in the 1670s. His birth is unrecorded and is placed probably at Blairhall. After Charles II died he lost political favour, and under William and Mary he was imprisoned more than once as a suspected Jacobite. An imprisonment in 1678 is the circumstance taken to have opened the Drumlanrig commission to James Smith. Both Bruce, as royal surveyor, and Robert Mylne, as royal master mason, were then at Holyrood. Smith married Janet, Mylne’s eldest daughter, in 1679, while he was working at Holyrood, and this became his first important documented commission as an independent architect. He had come up from mason, like his father.

The client of the great rebuilding was William Douglas, born in 1637 and died on 28 March 1695. He is the 3rd Earl of Queensberry and also called, in the building study, 3rd Earl of Drumlanrig, and he was 1st Marquess and then 1st Duke of Queensberry. He was the son of James Douglas, 2nd Earl of Queensberry, and of Margaret Stewart, daughter of John Stewart, 1st Earl of Traquair. He succeeded his father in 1671 and took his seat in the Parliament of Scotland on 12 June 1672. He was a privy councillor from 1667, Lord Justice General from 1680 to 1682, and Lord High Treasurer of Scotland from 1682 to 1686. He was created marquess on 11 February 1682 and duke on 3 November 1684, with remainder to his heirs male. The inventory credits the dukedom to his service as justice general and treasurer. In 1685 he was King James VII’s lord high commissioner to parliament, and in that same year he refused to support James VII’s measures against the established church. He was lord president of the privy council from 1686 to 1689, and from 1685 a privy councillor for both Scotland and England. In 1687 James Drummond, 4th Earl of Perth, accused him of maladministration, and he was stripped of his appointments. He assented to William and Mary, regained favour, and was made an extraordinary lord of session in 1693. Debts incurred under Cromwell had kept him from finishing his own education abroad, while his sons James, born in 1662 and died in 1711, and Henry made a grand tour of two and a half years through France and Italy, with a long stay in Rome. He married Lady Isabel Douglas, daughter of William Douglas, 1st Marquess of Douglas, and Lady Mary Gordon, in 1657. Their children included Lady Anne Douglas, Countess of Wemyss, who died on 23 February 1700 of injuries after her clothes caught fire; James, the 2nd duke; William, 1st Earl of March, who died on 9 September 1705 and was grandfather of the 4th duke; and George. He bought Queensberry House on the Royal Mile in 1689 and died there. The building nearly bankrupted him. One account says he spent only a single night in the finished house, disliked it, and went back to Sanquhar Castle, and that his son moved in after inheriting. The estate account instead says the views over the Nith decided him to build his ancestral home on this ridge.

The transformation is dated 1679 to 1689 on the listing and in the short history of the house, 1670 to 1690 in the narrative of the designed landscape, 1679 to 1691 in the gazetteer and the family history, with 64 hearths recorded by 1691, and 1679 to 1695 for the first duke’s campaign, the whole work with his son’s finishing running on to 1698. Dates cut on the stair-turret lintels run clockwise from the north-east corner in 1679, about every two years, and finish in 1689 at the tops of the stair towers and the north-east tower. In July 1684 the workforce was 66, including 31 masons and 8 wrights. The clock in the entrance tower is dated 1686. In that year the Dutch stone-carvers Peter Paul Boyse and Cornelius van Nerven, who had already spent three months at Kinross, were carving the north front, and perhaps earlier: a swagged curtain at the west porch carries a marquess’s coronet, so 1682 to 1684, and the matching curtain at the east porch carries a duke’s coronet, so after 1684. A contract of 1686 with the plumber William Waldhave required the leadwork to follow the signed drawings and to be surveyed by James Smith or whomever the duke appointed. By then the north quarter, apart from wright’s work in the gallery, the north-west tower with its three turrets, and the clock house were ready for lead, and the other stair turrets were finished. Waldhave also covered the garden pavilions with ogee roofs and supplied sash weights. The lead roofs and waterworks were finished in 1697 by another plumber, John Carnabie, who took a yearly maintenance contract. Letters of 1687 to 1690 from the duke to his cousin, the laird of Dornock, his local caretaker, show Smith as architect over William Lukup. Lukup’s tomb calls him master of works, employed from 1679 to 1690. James Nasmith, from September 1697, was master of works in the administrative sense for the second duke: materials, payments, books, and seeing that Lukup’s instructed work was completed, while Smith and the gardener Cornelius gave the design directions. The second duke wrote on 22 April 1696 that he was to go to Drumlanrig with Mr Smith. Smith also designed the duke’s mausoleum at Durisdeer church. The ogee roofs of the two south pavilions were commissioned from the wright Alexander Acock. The great oak staircase, a freestanding stair of virtuoso spiral turning, was added in 1697. The lead sundial, dated 1692, is by Thomas Wynne of London, and a sundial by Thomas Wynne also stands in the forecourt. The iron balustrade of the south balcony and stair is by James Horn of Kirkcaldy, also given as Kirkaldy. The horseshoe stair is believed to have been replaced about 1860 by Charles Howitt, copying the original, though no evidence of that replacement had been found when the study was written, and Howitt is also credited with reconstructing the perron in 1860 to the original design.

Smith’s house is a square courtyard with a turreted tower at each corner and a stair turret in each internal angle, a form compared with George Heriot’s Hospital in Edinburgh, begun in 1628 and finished over the next sixty years by William Wallace, William Aytoun, James Murray, and John and Robert Mylne. Drumlanrig reused the old castle rather than starting clear. It extended the tower-house pattern, raised the building, regularised the outside, put the main entrance at first-floor level, and set public rooms in the centre with private rooms to the sides. The north front is polished pink ashlar with a giant order of fluted composite pilasters, said to be the first such order in Scotland, a balustrade, and a central tower with a semicircular pediment, a clock in a tempietto, and a ducal coronet. The composition has been compared with the Palazzo Senatorio on the Capitoline in Rome. Balusters rotated 45 degrees let more light onto the north front, and the same device appears over the main entrance at Holyrood, probably also Smith’s. Adjusting the order to old window positions makes the pilasters overlap the pediments. The lower portico has ribbed cross vaults that look like work of about 1500 and may instead be late seventeenth century, like the vault over the entrance. The horseshoe stair and the oblique Doric of the lower portico have been tied to Juan Caramuel de Lobkowitz’s treatise on oblique architecture. Large terraces and a bold balustrade wrap the front. The divided horseshoe stair rises from the forecourt to an open loggia. John Summerson called the house the most remarkable building to come from the tradition of the king’s master mason William Wallace, who died in 1631, the last great gesture of the Scottish castle style, and obstinately Scottish. He did not dwell on the older fabric inside it. Colen Campbell published it in Vitruvius Britannicus without naming a designer. The second duke himself drew a front of the house. Original drawings and accounts have disappeared. A wooden model with elevations, which the master of works is said to have followed closely, has also disappeared. The north service wings shown as absent on the early garden plan were added in the early nineteenth century.

The pink stone is an impure arkosic arenite from the nearby King’s Quarry, on the Buccleuch estates, then readily available. It becomes purple when wet, and it runs from fine to coarse, pink to lilac, with clay minerals and grey bands where the iron is less oxidised. Bedding and texture make it an unlikely choice for fine ashlar, yet the north front has held, while clay leaves it open to damage from water. Further stone was quarried in 1698 to the west of the house to shorten the haul. Chimneys and turrets are ashlar. The other elevations are rough rubble, probably finished in pressed pink harl ruled to look like coursed ashlar, as Smith did at Melville House and at his own Newhailes. The flat lead roofs, with no traditional slate, display the Queensberry lead mines. In October 1698 white lead and oil for the windows were brought from Holland, and Nasmith was told to compare timber prices at Whitehaven, also written Whytheaven, at Leith, and, in 1698, from Norway at Dumfries. Charles McKean wrote that even in the grand manner Bruce and Smith kept a Scottish accent, that Smith had made a contemporary palace visitors allowed to be noble, and that the influence shows in William Adam’s Duff House and in Smith’s later work. The old fabric and the Douglas dynasty are given as the reasons the building is still called a castle rather than a palace.

James, 2nd Duke of Queensberry, inherited in 1695 and was a leading supporter of the Act of Union. He carried the same designers on to Queensberry House in Edinburgh. His instructions of 1697 go into materials, cost and the newest fashion, and they include a well of love in the park and pedestals for lead statues, with marble fireplaces among Smith’s pieces. Garden dykes were already collapsing in 1697 from water getting in. The upper terrace is about 10 metres high. An aqueduct about two miles long fed a cascade on the hill to the south. A formal garden was made between 1675 and 1697 on principles associated with Sir William Bruce, and the layout is compared with the plans for Kinross House and Balcaskie. Stone walls enclosed it, with six stone pavilions under lead ogee roofs matching the house. Water included a clanging clock. In 1695 the second duke employed James Wood, son of Hew Wood of Hamilton, as gardener and sent him to London in 1696 for training. Wood did not return. The duke then employed the Dutch gardener Cornelius van Nerven, the same name as the stone-carver of the north front. A summer house and water cascades were added in 1698. The third duke employed David Low as gardener from 1714 to 1747. In that time further landscape was made, including an early bowling green, and Sir John Clerk of Penicuik designed cascades added from 1728 to 1732. The life recorded under the name John Clerk of Penicuik is a different man: a Montrose merchant, son of William Clerk, baptised at Fettercairn on 22 December 1611 by Alexander Forbes, Bishop of Caithness, settled in Paris in 1634, home in 1646, purchaser of the barony of Penicuik, husband of Mary Gray in 1647 and of Elizabeth Johnston on 27 January 1670, and dead in 1674, so he is not the designer of those cascades. Low laid out the present frame of terraces, steps and grass banks in 1738, over terraces that may go back to the first earl in the mid-seventeenth century. In 1720 Daniel Defoe described pavilions and banqueting houses at the end of the gardens, and greens, espaliers and hedges in perfection. John Rocque’s plan of the garden and plantations is dated 1739 in the building study, and an engraved plan by him is also said to have been published before 1739 and, for the garden and plantations plate, after 1739. It shows the cascade opposite a fountain called Jock an’ the Horn, falling to a canal made from the Marr Burn. Both fell out of use in the late eighteenth century, though stonework traces remain. After Low died in 1747 the garden staff fell to eight or ten men, the new head gardener was paid less, and maintenance slackened. By 1810 there was a decision to remove the formal gardens. The fourth duke, called Old Q, later abandoned the cascade.

Charles, 3rd Duke of Queensberry, made the great formal gardens and died in 1778. The property then went to a second cousin, William, 4th Duke of Queensberry. He spent on a lavish life, and in 1810, just before he died, most of the mature trees were felled for money. What he did not spend went to an illegitimate daughter and financed the Wallace Collection. Neighbours bought some of the condemned timber and left it standing, including a sycamore called the largest in Britain and about 300 years old, and a short run of the lime avenue. Drumlanrig and some of the Queensberry titles passed by the female line to Henry, already 3rd Duke of Buccleuch, and the two dukedoms joined. The Buccleuch title had been created twice on 20 April 1663, first for James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, eldest illegitimate son of Charles II, and second in her own right for his wife Anne Scott, 4th Countess of Buccleuch. Monmouth was attainted after rebelling against James II and VII. Anne’s title passed to descendants who have used the surnames Scott, Montagu-Scott, Montagu Douglas Scott, and Scott again. In 1810 the 3rd Duke of Buccleuch inherited the dukedom of Queensberry and that title separated from the marquessate of Queensberry. Henry and his son began to repair the neglected place. Sir Walter Scott wrote in 1819 that Charles, 4th Duke of Buccleuch, had already doubled the quantity of wood and that the young plantations were beginning to look beautiful. Walter Francis, 5th Duke of Buccleuch, succeeded in 1819 and spent the next 65 years restoring the castle and the grounds. Scott, a close friend, stayed here several times. Between 1812 and 1840 William Atkinson, William Elliot, Edward Blore, William Burn, William Sawrey Gilpin and Sir Charles Barry were asked for designs. Elliot’s restoration is dated 1813, for the 4th Duke of Buccleuch. Atkinson’s plans for alterations run about 1812 to 1817. Burn’s repairs, a new gardener’s house, and probably the forecourt wings, fall about 1830 to 1834. The coach house and stables are mostly by Burn and Atkinson between 1812 and 1830. Barry’s scheme of about 1840 would have remodelled the castle as a French château with formal gardens, and only the garden part was carried out. Plans for a cloister and chapel by Sir George Gilbert Scott, also Sir Gilbert G. Scott, were not executed. Other names on the later works include John Smallwood and J. Laird. The park east of the castle, north to Carse Wood and south to Tibbers, across the river at Drumlanrig Bridge and up to Alison’s Bank below Holestane, was laid out between 1810 and 1840 by the 4th and 5th dukes of Buccleuch, under Scott’s ideas and, in Alan Tait’s reading, after a scheme of Gilpin, whose flower-garden plans were carried out. In 1833 John Claudius Loudon wrote in the Gardeners’ Magazine of the extensive improvements then under way. Clumps and copses were oak, beech, ash and some lime. In the late nineteenth century more than 80 miles of drives were recorded. One led to Duncan’s Linn, a gorge of the Nith, crossed by the creel bridge of cast-iron columns, iron stays and a timber walkway, probably part of Gilpin’s picturesque layout. The laundry, early to mid-nineteenth century, was remodelled about 1871 by Charles Howitt and made into two cottages in 1924 by J. Laird of Glasgow. The mains and offices, in Burn’s manner, were altered by Laird in 1924. Drumlanrig Bridge, probably late medieval, was repaired by Lukup in 1710 and widened in 1860 by Howitt. Bridge cottage is probably by Burn about 1840. The gardener’s cottage is mid-nineteenth century. Howitt’s glasshouse near it, about 1877, was restored a hundred years later and still raises plants. St Geoffrey’s Bridge crosses the Marr Burn. The Heather House, north of the Duchess Well, is an octagonal rustic summerhouse of split logs, twisted roots, shells and heather rope, and three more of similar date stand in the woods, one south-west of the castle and two across the Marr Burn. They were illustrated in Charles McIntosh’s book The Garden, published in 1853, written while he was head gardener. The kitchen garden, about half a mile or 1 kilometre south-east, was built about 1830, probably when Burn designed the garden cottage in 1831. In 1845 it held over four acres of vegetables, 200 feet of glass for vines and peaches, 100 feet of pine stove, 100 feet of Dutch peach pits, 50 feet of succession peach houses, 100 feet of forcing frames and 50 feet of exotic stoves. By 1883 the glass was said to have few equals. The houses fell apart between the world wars, and the garden is now grass, with a corrugated shelter for wintering stock.

The east parterre, the American garden of heaths, has been replanted to an eighteenth-century design with lavender, box and low conifers. The pattern of the west parterre’s white sand garden can still be read in the lawn. The Duchess’s garden, once roses, now has herbaceous borders and a herb garden, with a tennis court and staff vegetable plots at the west end. Below a retaining wall rebuilt about 1830, three terraces drop toward the Marr meadow. The western one, the bowling green, has large yews probably of the eighteenth century. The middle one, the Shawl parterre, was replanted in pink, grey, blue and white. One of the first maidenhair trees, Ginkgo biloba, in the country is trained on the high wall. A sunburst parterre in the meadow has been brought back by mowing at different heights. The shrubbery includes a weeping beech, a large Abies alba, and a Douglas fir raised from seed sent by David Douglas the explorer to his brother, who was master of works here. A scarlet oak was planted by Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, and a metasequoia by the head of forestry in China. A castle tour also speaks of visits from astronauts. Almost all the parterres had gone before the Second World War. Two have been restored, one of them to the plan of 1747. Bedding continued on some terraces until just after that war, when most were grassed. The pleasure ground on the east is taken to be Gilpin’s, with cloud-shaped beds, rose baskets, and some ironwork left. Paths lead to an adventure playground designed in 1977 by Lord Dalkeith. A long terrace walk is given as 183 metres, along a stone balustrade known for tender climbers. Woodland garden, a restored Victorian rock garden and rhododendrons are later additions. Drumlanrig Wood, on the steep ground west of the house, had its southern part planted in the mid-seventeenth century by the first duke and was extended when the third duke laid out the formal gardens. Most mature timber fell about 1810. Replanting ran through the nineteenth century. Walter, 8th Duke of Buccleuch, from 1935 to 1973, an expert forester, replanted after the Second World War and mixed a wider range of conifers among hardwoods left near the castle. His son John, 9th duke, and his wife increased restoration and replanting. In 1978 a lime avenue was planted the length of the approach, inside the old line and five times as far, because the older limes were over-mature. William, 6th Duke, from 1884 to 1914, had kept the gardens flourishing. The Nith and its banks from Drumlanrig Bridge to Duncan’s Linn are a site of special scientific interest. Soils run from neutral to slightly acid, rainfall is about 75 inches or 1,905 millimetres, and woodland shelters the gardens from freezing winds. The castle has also been a filming place for The Thirty-Nine Steps in 1978 and for the series Outlander in 2016.

The Roman fort is a separate monument on a level terrace about 70 metres above the river, south-east of the castle. Aerial photography in 1984 showed its outline some 350 yards, or 320 metres, south-east, and the scheduled area is described as 400 metres south-east. Parch marks gave the ditches and the street plan. The fort is rectangular, with an annexe on the north-east, and low banks and ditches remain on the south. It measures around 240 metres from north-west to south-east by about 150 metres, and the evaluation also gives the area as some 1.8 hectares. Up to five parallel ditches show on the north-east and north-west. Geophysical survey in 2004 confirmed the plan, found entrance gaps on the north-east and south-west and midway on the north-west end, and located streets, barracks and the headquarters, with anomalies in the annexe. The evaluation of 9 to 11 June 2004, broadcast on 23 January 2005, used 1 hectare of resistance survey inside the fort and 3.4 hectares of gradiometer survey including the annexe, then twelve trenches. One trench, 22 metres long, crossed the inner defences on the north-east and found a V-shaped ditch, given on the scheduling account as 7 metres wide and 3 metres deep, and a turf rampart with stone foundations at the front and possibly at the rear. Five small trenches lay in the praetentura, the north-western two-thirds, and six in the principia. They found beam slots, possible postholes, stone walls some of them robbed, floors, and metalled street edges. A stone-lined feature was read, tentatively, as a water trough or cistern. The size suggests that part of an auxiliary regiment may have lain in nearby fortlets, and there were hints of cavalry. Every find recovered was Antonine. The scheduling account dates the fort to the Antonine campaign of 139 to 165, and the evaluation to the campaigns of the 140s to the 170s. A Flavian fort, of 77 to 90, or of 79 to 83, has been suggested. No firm Flavian evidence was found. Two phases in the headquarters, the lower one not fully explored, and a possible earlier rampart, leave an earlier fort possible and undemonstrated. Abandonment was preceded by deliberate destruction: buildings demolished and burned, and the rampart slighted. The fort was scheduled on 31 October 2018, and the supplementary account was updated on 11 March 2019. The castle itself is the listed building. The scheduled fort is the earthwork on the terrace.

In 2021 a watching brief was kept on groundworks for a ticket office and a decked area near the castle, inside an area of interest for Roman finds made when the adventure playground was built, and on the line of the ha-ha of the designed landscape. Estate maps of the nineteenth century and later mapping show the ground as lightly wooded parkland since at least 1848. The trenches found clean silted topsoil over a bright red very stony silt with larger rocks in the western half, and a pale yellow-orange gritty silt with small stones in the eastern half. A few angular stones at the eastern edge may belong to the ha-ha. No significant archaeological finds or features were uncovered. No later excavation catalogue, for 2023 through 2026, has been published for the castle walls or the fort.

The rooms hold part of a collection built over five centuries by the Montagu, Douglas and Scott forebears. Pride of place in the house account is Rembrandt’s An Old Woman Reading. Family portraits by Thomas Gainsborough, Allan Ramsay, also given as Alan Ramsay, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, landscapes by Paul Sandby and Dutch painters, cartoons by Rowlandson, and two cabinets by André-Charles Boulle, also André Charles Boulle, are named in the collection account, with Holbein also named among works brought by the Buccleuch line. The Madonna of the Yarnwinder, the Buccleuch Madonna, is a panel of the subject Leonardo da Vinci was painting in Florence in 1501 for Florimond Robertet, secretary to Louis XII. A letter of 14 April 1501 from Fra Pietro da Novellara to Isabella d’Este describes Leonardo at work on it. Scholars divide on whether it reached the French court in 1507. The Buccleuch and Lansdowne versions are both thought at least partly Leonardo’s, their underdrawings sharing changes, including a group read as Saint Joseph making a baby walker, perhaps with the infant Baptist, Saint Elizabeth and a midwife, and a beast of burden that moved during the design. The Buccleuch landscape is a watery background, possibly finished by a pupil. The panel is oil, about 48.4 by 36.8 centimetres, and dated about 1501. The Montagus bought it in Paris in 1756 at the sale of Marie-Joseph, duc d’Hostun et de Tallard. It entered the Buccleuch collection when Lady Elizabeth Montagu married Henry Scott, 3rd Duke of Buccleuch, in 1767, and it hung at Drumlanrig from 1767 until it was stolen in 2003. The theft is dated August 2003, and one account gives 23 August 2003. A report of the raid appeared on 27 August 2003. Two thieves posing as tourists are described, and also four men who joined a tour, overpowered a guard, left by a window, and discarded the frame just outside the walls. Words put in their mouths to two visitors from New Zealand were that they were the police and that this was only practice. Estimates of value are given as £30 million, as £40 million, as a headline figure of £37 million, and as over £50 million if the attribution were fully accepted. It was recovered on 4 October 2007 from a lawyers’ office in Glasgow, after an English lawyer, Marshall Ronald of Skelmersdale, told a loss adjuster he could arrange a return within 72 hours, and undercover officers met him. Four arrests were made that day, including two solicitors, the men named Calum Jones, Marshall Ronald, Robert Graham and John Doyle, and eight men were also said to have been charged. An insurance payment of £3.2 million was expected to be returned for full title. John Scott, 9th Duke of Buccleuch, had died on 5 September 2007, a month before the recovery, and the year before had written that he hoped to see it retrieved a second time, recalling a temporary loss in Italy during the Second World War. The tenth duke, Richard Scott, said he was determined it should be on public view again, at Drumlanrig. It was examined, found in good condition, and lent for display. The loan is dated 2008 from the Buccleuch Living Heritage Trust and 2009 by the next duke to the National Gallery of Scotland, now the Scottish National Gallery, where it remains on display as of 2026. It is therefore not the picture now given pride of place inside the castle. Ronald was cleared in 2010 of holding the duke to ransom. In 2013 he sued the tenth duke and the chief constable for a reward he put at £4.25 million, also reported as £4.2 million. In 2015 Lord Brailsford rejected the claim, calling the arrangements a police scheme to recover stolen property, and the duke said his part in the approach had been at police request and under police direction. The owner is named as Richard Scott, 10th Duke of Buccleuch.

Walking, hiking and cycling routes are open through the year unless closed, and in 2021 they were closed because of damage from Storm Arwen. That storm, part of the 2021–22 European windstorm season, was named on 25 November 2021. It struck the United Kingdom, Ireland and France with strong winds and snow, caused at least three deaths and widespread loss of power, and was worsened because the strong winds came unusually from the north. On 26 November 2021 a rare red wind warning covered the east coast of Scotland from Aberdeenshire down to the Tees, with amber and yellow warnings more widely, and gusts above 90 miles an hour from the north-east. As of September 2023 the castle itself opens to the public only at very limited times of year, while the stable yard and adventure playground are open nearly all year. A third edition of the illustrated guide to the castle, its people and its paintings, introduced by the present duke, is sold in the gift shop when the castle is open. The house remains the Dumfriesshire family home.

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