The Most Beautiful Stately Homes in Scotland

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A handsome home draped in ideas and epiphanies, exploring Abbotsford House and its blissful fragrant gardens is like entering into the subconscious of Sir Walter Scott. Each stone slab, each meticulously picked collectible, each minute yet compelling detail, offers a fleeting snippet of his many ponderings, idiosyncrasies and interests. Described by this prolific 19th-century Scots writer as ‘romance in stone and mortar’, Scott bought the land in 1811 and built the house as we view it today in three stages, before planting tribes of trees and renaming it Abbotsford. As expected, the library is a book-lover’s dream. Live like royalty by booking a stay in a wing of this stately home.

A 19th-century neo-Gothic wonder designed for the 3rd Marquess of Bute, nothing can prepare the senses, the soul and the mind for the celestial beauty encapsulated within Mount Stuart House and its maze of mind-reeling gardens. Praised as one of the most tech-savvy houses back in its day, Mount Stuart is said to host the world’s first ever heated swimming pool. Between the chapel awash with Carrera marble and accompanying Sistine-Chapel-style floors, the series of star-clad ceilings punctuated with constellations decorating the sky like necklaces, and the 80ft-tall (24m) Marble Hall with its rare Italian and Sicilian marble and alabaster, it’s a sight for sore eyes.

Set amidst its striking 90,000-acre estate, Drumlanrig Castle is a brooding structure graced with fine symmetry and a captivating presence. As the Dumfriesshire seat of the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch and Queensberry, this bonnie castle is applauded as one of Scotland’s greatest examples of 17th-century Renaissance architecture. Affectionately referred to as the ‘Pink Palace’, thanks to its meticulously cut red sandstone, Drumlanrig boasts 17 turrets, 4 towers and 120 rooms and was used as a set in Outlander.

A pocket of respite and beautiful scenery, Gosford House is tucked away along the East Lothian coast. As the seat of the Earls of Wemyss and March, the house basks in the splendour of the 5,000 acres of combined coast and parkland, which includes an exquisite old stone-adorned curling house, striking mausoleum and an Eden-like pond punctuated with an ocean of lily pads. The house, a neo-classical work of art and one of the last celebrated commissions of revered Scots architect Robert Adam, was finished in 1808 for the seventh Earl of Wemyss.