Sorry state of mansion going to seed

A CRUMBLING pile which was once home to an aristocratic family with links to Robert the Bruce could be saved from ruin thanks to a community campaign.

- By Tom Bevan

Drone pictures show the fragile state of Cambusnethan Priory near Wishaw, southeast of Glasgow, as it is gradually reclaimed by nature after 40 years without a permanent resident.

The Grade-A listed property was built in 1819 for the Lockhart of Castlehill family, a powerful line of baronets.

It was designed by James Gillespie Graham, perhaps the most in-demand country house architect in Scotland at the time, who created a neo-Gothic fantasy in deepest North Lanarkshire.

The mansion was later taken over by industrialist Sir John Craig, who made his fortune in Glasgow's steel trade as chairman of Colvilles Ltd.

After Sir John died in 1957 the house struggled to find a buyer.

But finally in the late 1960s it was saved from demolition when it was bought by Ron Wilson, from Bearsden north of Glasgow, who staged mock medieval banquets there in the 1970s.