On his accession, our new King Charles inherited several castles, extensive lands and an undisclosed chunk of his mother’s £370 million fortune. We have no useful advice on how to acquire such a financial cushion but if you’re content simply to settle down amid some royally endorsed soft furnishings we know just the place: Killochan Castle in South Ayrshire.
The castle, one of Scotland’s finest fortified houses, has recently emerged from a £1 million makeover by royal warrant holder Mikhail Pietranek, the interior designer who led the refurbishment of Highgrove, the monarch’s Gloucestershire home. At Killochan, Pietranek had carte blanche to create a mood board not just fit for a king but also for us commoners. For the first time in its 555-year history, the ten-bedroom castle is available for hire on an exclusive-use basis.
However, when my husband and I arrive in inky darkness, it’s not Pietranek’s sustainable silks and tartans that provide the favourable first impressions but the sturdy handiwork of his 15th-century predecessors. Evening, when every curve and corbel is spectacularly caressed by spotlight, is the ideal time to appreciate the ancient artistry of a castle built in 1467 as a wedding gift for James II’s daughter Princess Mary. In 1586 the building, which is an hour from Glasgow and close to the seaside village of Girvan, was remodelled by John Cathcart, adding a wing and raising it two storeys so it now soars to a topknot of turrets.
James Wood, estate manager, and Clinton Adams, head of operations, usher us up an echoey stone staircase and into the grand hall. It is a 40ft sweep of wood-panelled salon with huge swagged windows and a crisscross of sofas in rich reds, peacock blues and burnished golds as vibrant as a court jester’s jacket. The drama ramps up courtesy of a two-metre chandelier hanging from a ceiling that depicts a scene from the Battle of Flodden in 1513 during which Robert Cathcart was fatally wounded. Like the gilt-framed portraits that line the walls, the mural is a 21st-century addition, commissioned from an artist who painted it in panels in Florence and shipped them over to be assembled on site. I think Leonardo might call that cheating.
We squeeze in between plump Pietranek-designed cushions on a Pietranek-designed sofa and warm our hands by the wood-burner under an impressive 16th-century fireplace. Despite the grandeur, the room feels surprisingly cosy. Wood tells us the Cathcart family owned the castle until 1954. It then passed through a series of owners including a former Manchester United director and a German princess before a Cathcart took possession again in a story that even a rom-com scriptwriter would blush to pitch. Rip Cathcart grew up in humble circumstances in Virginia in the US, with a sketch of the ancestral home on his bedroom wall and a dream to one day return to Scotland to buy back Killochan. He became a successful property developer, and was finally able to make good on that childhood ambition in October 2021. Over the past 12 months, he has lavished love on the old place and now he’s willing to share the results.