Qualla: Barnbougle Castle

Barnbougle Castle: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Thomas Nugent, CC BY-SA 2.0. On the night before each Lord of Barnbougle dies, the legend says, a black-clad figure appears on Hound Point with a hunting dog at his side. The man raises a bugle. He blows three notes. The notes echo across the Firth of Forth, and the next morning the laird is dead. The story is the origin of the castle's name - Bar'n-bugle, in the antiquarian William Fyfe's 1851 reading, the bugle hill. The truth is duller and more interesting at once. The name probably comes from the Brittonic brinn bugel, 'shepherd's hill,' for the high ground rising behind the shore. But the castle has accumulated stories for so long that the legends have become part of its architecture.

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Image: Thomas Nugent | CC BY-SA 2.0

Barnbougle Castle: Mowbrays, Mary Queen of Scots, and a Judicial Duel

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Supergolden, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Mowbrays, a Norman family, built the first tower house at Barnbougle in the 13th century. They were also lords of Dalmeny and Inverkeithing, with land all along the southern shore of the Forth. Sir John Mowbray was knighted at the Battle of Homildon Hill in 1402. By 1586 the ...

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Image: User:Supergolden | CC BY-SA 3.0

Barnbougle Castle: The Roseberys Arrive

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonathan Oldenbuck, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Mowbrays sold Barnbougle in 1615 to Sir Thomas Hamilton, soon to be Earl of Haddington. Hamilton's grandson sold it in 1662 to Sir Archibald Primrose of Carrington, a senior judge who became Lord Justice General of Scotland in 1676. His son, also Archibald, was created Earl o...

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Image: Jonathan Oldenbuck | CC BY-SA 3.0

Barnbougle Castle: A Library and a Practice Room

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gunther Tschuch, CC BY-SA 4.0. Rosebery rebuilt Barnbougle specifically to house his private library. He was a serious historian, author of Napoleon: The Last Phase (1900), and he had assembled one of the finest Napoleonic collections in Britain - many of the books and manuscripts later passed to the National ...

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Image: Gunther Tschuch | CC BY-SA 4.0

Barnbougle Castle: The Ghost on Hound Point

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brydon Leask, CC BY-SA 2.0. William Fyfe collected the death-bugle legend in 1851 and wrote a romantic poem around it about Sir Roger Mowbray, who took his hound on Crusade to the Holy Land and died there. His ghost - and the hound's - were said to return to the Forth shore whenever a Barnbougle laird was a...

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Image: Brydon Leask | CC BY-SA 2.0