Our flowers of Scotland

Two substantial estates demonstrate Scotland’s sporting and environmental potential

- Penny Churchill

THE Edinburgh office of Strutt & Parker (0131–226 2500) has announced the sale of one of Scotland’s grandest country houses, the striking, Category A-listed Auchendennan House near Alexandria, Dunbartonshire, a beautifully restored, 54-room baronial castle on the south-west shore of Loch Lomond, where the lowlands of Central Scotland and the Highlands meet.

The agents quote a guide price of ‘offers over £3.75 million’ for the four-storey sandstone castle, set in 55 acres of formal gardens and parkland within Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park, commanding spectacular views across the lake towards Ben Lomond, 3,196ft high and the most southerly of the Scottish Munros. The castle, designed by the eminent Glasgow architect, John Burnet Snr, was built in about 1866 for George Martin, a Glasgow-based East India merchant, on the site of an earlier Italianate property of which no trace remains. Burnet also designed the quadrangular clock house, cottage and stables—all listed Category B. The magnificent library was designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.