Penkill Castle

The 16th-century tower was built by a branch of the Boyd family, relatives of the Earls of Kilmarnock, and extended several times. The castle later fell into decline, becoming near ruinous by the early 19th century. Starting in 1857, the site was drastically restored and a modern wing added on the east.
The castle owner has been known as the Laird of Penkill, starting in the 16th century with Adam Boyd, 1st Laird of Penkill. The lairds were all men until the 14th Laird, the artist Alice Boyd, in the late 19th century. She is credited with extending the original castle grounds after she became laird.

The castle passed was sold in the 1980s and remains under private ownership, much to the embarrassment of Scottish heritage groups whose failure to purchase Penkill and its contents has been a major bone of contention, given the castle’s position in Scottish history and culture. Indeed, Penkill Castle was instrumental in the development of the British Pre-Raphaelite movement. In the late 1850s, the artist William Bell Scott began a liaison with Alice Boyd, whose brother was then the laird. A double portrait of the Boyd siblings painted by Scott was not sold at auction – unlike most of the other objet d’arts in the castle. Legend has it that the painting is cursed and must remain in its natural home, a story lent weight by the sudden death of one owner who attempted to remove it from Penkill.

The castle was also frequented by other Pre-Raphaelite artists and writers, including the poet Christina Rossetti, who wrote of it: ‘Even Naples in imagination cannot efface the quiet fertile comeliness of Penkill in reality.’