Claypotts is what historians of Scottish architecture call a Z-plan tower house: a rectangular main block with two projecting circular towers at opposite corners, allowing defenders to fire along the building's main faces from either tower. It was a popular layout in the 16th century, although, as historians dryly note, a castle of Claypotts's modest domestic scale would not have had much of a real defensive role. The Z-plan here was as much about prestige and the visual signalling of status as it was about practical defence. The Strachan family had leased the land from the Tironensian Abbey of Lindores since the early 16th century; John Strachan finally built his castle on it. The slow construction may simply reflect a small landowner building when he could afford to.

In 1601 the Strachans sold Claypotts to Sir William Graham of Ballunie, who later passed it to Sir William Graham of Claverhouse. Through that line, the castle eventually came into the possession of John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee - the soldier romanticised as "Bonnie Dundee" who led the first Jacobite rising of 1689. Graham died at the Battle of Killiecrankie on 27 July 1689, struck by a musket ball at the moment of his victory over government forces. With his death the castle reverted to the Crown. In 1694 it was granted to James Douglas, 2nd Marquess of Douglas, beginning a long Douglas tenure. After the Duke of Douglas died in 1761, an eight-year legal battle - the famous Douglas Cause - decided that Archibald Douglas was the rightful heir. The castle passed by marriage to the 13th Earl of Home, who gave it to the state in 1926.

Every old Scottish house collects its legends, and Claypotts has at least one good one. The tale tells of a brownie - one of the household spirits of Scottish folklore - who lived in the castle and helped the servants with their work. Brownies were notoriously particular about being valued; they did not take kindly to being mocked, paid, or shown disrespect. According to the legend, this particular brownie left Claypotts in disgust because of a lazy kitchen maid whose work he was tired of doing for her. Once a brownie departs, the folklore says, he does not return. The story is the kind of small domestic mythology that anchors a place in local memory longer than any battle would.

What makes Claypotts unusual today is its setting. The castle stands in the West Ferry suburb of Dundee, surrounded by 20th-century housing - bungalows and post-war estates pressing up against the medieval walls. There is no traditional castle landscape: no surrounding parkland, no wooded approach, no defensive moat. Just a 16th-century tower house at a junction of suburban streets, looking exactly as it did when John Strachan finished it in 1588. Historic Environment Scotland maintains it as a Scheduled Ancient Monument. Inside, the towers and rooms remain remarkably intact, giving visitors a clearer sense of how a small Scottish laird actually lived than almost any other tower house of the period.