Margaret Tudor died at Methven on 18 October 1541, far from London and farther still from the throne she had married into. She was the elder sister of Henry VIII, the queen of James IV who had been killed at Flodden, the grandmother of Mary Queen of Scots. She had outlived two more husbands and a great deal of Scottish politics, and Methven, given to her as part of her marriage gift in May 1503, was the last place she called home. The present house dates from 1664, designed by the mason-architect John Mylne over what may be much older work. But the lands beneath it have carried royal weight for eight centuries, passing from family to family by treason, marriage, conquest, and the patient transfer of paperwork between Scottish lawyers.
The Mowbray family held Methven from the 12th century. When Scotland tore itself apart over the succession after Alexander III's death, the Mowbrays backed John Balliol against Robert the Bruce. Bruce won. The crown took Methven and gave it to Walter Stewart, the Bruce's son-in-law, in the great redistribution of estates that followed. His descendant Walter Stewart, Earl of Atholl, lost it again after being involved in the plot that murdered James I at Perth in 1437. The castle survived a siege in 1444 and hosted King James II in 1450. James IV came several times in the 1490s, hunting in the surrounding countryside as Scottish kings had done for centuries.
On 29 May 1503, James IV included Methven Castle in the marriage gift that came with his bride, Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII. She was thirteen. He was thirty. The match was supposed to bind Scotland and England together. It did, eventually: their great-grandson James VI of Scotland became James I of England. Before that long fuse burned through, Margaret had a complicated Scottish life. She was widowed at Flodden in 1513, married Archibald Douglas in 1514, divorced him in 1527, and married Henry Stewart, 1st Lord Methven, the next year. She lived at the castle through that third marriage and died there in October 1541, age 51, of what contemporary accounts described as a sudden seizure. Her body was buried at the Carthusian Charterhouse in Perth, a few miles east, which the Reformation later destroyed.
When the third Lord Methven died without an heir in 1584, James VI gave the castle to his favourite, the Duke of Lennox. In 1664 the estate was bought by Patrick Smythe of Braco, and Smythe commissioned John Mylne to build the present house. Mylne was one of the master masons of his generation, and the building he raised at Methven is unusually formal for its date and place: a tall, symmetrical block with classical proportions and corner pavilions, more chateau than tower house. An early drawing for the project survives, showing similarities to Pitreavie Castle near Dunfermline. The architect James Smith may have had a hand in the work. The 1664 building probably wraps around older fabric, including the central spine wall, but the appearance is decisively of its century.
The Smythe family held Methven through the 18th and 19th centuries, adding to the castle and the grounds. The parks and gardens still appear in the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes in Scotland, the national listing of significant designed landscapes. The castle was sold in 1923 and passed through several owners as Scotland's country house economy collapsed. The clock tower came down around 1965. The interior was remodelled in 1800, and only one staircase survives from the original 17th-century work. In 1984 architect Kenneth Murdoch began the restoration that brought the building back from the edge of total loss. It remains a private home, not open to the public, visible from the road east of Methven village as a tall pale block among the trees, holding Margaret Tudor's last address and four centuries of Scottish politics within its walls.
Methven Castle lies at 56.42 degrees N, 3.55 degrees W, east of Methven village in Perth and Kinross. Recommended viewing altitude 2,000 to 3,500 feet AGL to make out the symmetrical 1664 block among its trees. Nearest airport is Perth/Scone (EGPT) approximately 5 nm to the east. Dundee (EGPN) lies about 22 nm east. The Ochil Hills rise to the south. The castle sits in farmland between the Almond and Earn river valleys, with views east toward Perth and west into Strathearn.