Doune Castle

• Location: Castle Hill, Doune FK16 6EA
• Opening times: 1 April to 30 September 9.30am – 5.30pm; 1 October to 30 March 10.00am – 4.00pm. Note: Last entry ¾ hour before stated closing time.
• Entry: Adult £10.00, concession £8.00, child (7 – 15 years old) £6.00, family prices from £20.00Access: Free parking on site.

After Dunblane Cathedral I drive the 5 ½ miles to Doune Castle. It is only going on 1pm but the sun is already paling in the sky, and the barely softened frost is hardening anew. I feel for the Historic Environment Scotland staff manning the car park and the castle’s main entrance. The cold must have made a nest of their bones hours ago.

I am surprised at the number of staff on duty at an off the beaten track castle in the chill of winter, but some quick research back home reveals Doune to be a major beneficiary of ‘the Outlander effect’. Doune Castle was a filming location for the Starz television series, and in the year prior to the show’s 2014 debut the castle welcomed 38,000 visitors. By 2019, those numbers had quadrupled to 153,000. As with all visitor attractions COVID-19 took its toll the following years, but by 2023 visitor numbers had climbed to 109,511, way above other brown signed attractions such as Blackness Castle, itself an Outlander beneficiary (72,299), Lindisfarne Priory (67,748), Fort George (64,551), and Melrose Abbey (46,577). And Outlander is far from Doune Castle’s only screen appearance, as we shall see.

The castle was built by Robert Stewart (c1340 – 1420), Duke of Albany, probably on the site of a previous fortification. Albany ruled Scotland as Regent following the death of his brother Robert III in April 1406. Robert’s eleven-year-old son was now James I of Scotland, but he had been captured by the English the previous March. Unfortunately for James, Albany rather liked power and was in no rush to negotiate his release, and he remained in captivity for the next 18 years.

Albany died in 1420, but his son Murdoch, the new Duke of Albany, was equally lethargic in pressing for the release of James, a failure that didn’t escape the king’s notice. James finally secured his freedom in 1424, and the following year had Murdoch and two of his sons executed on Heading Hill, which I visited during my trip to Stirling Castle. This was just eight miles from Murdoch’s castle in Doune, but history does not record if his last words were, “I can see my house from here”.

The castle became crown property, and opened its doors to a litany of well-kent faces. The ubiquitous Mary Queen of Scots visited several times and forces loyal to her held the castle during the brief civil war that followed her forced abdication in 1567. Her son James VI was also a semi-regular and spent the then princely sum of £300 on repairs. Charles Edward Stuart, the villainous prince that history inexplicably remembers as ‘Bonnie’, occupied the castle after the 1745 Uprising, and government troops captured following the 1746 Battle of Falkirk were imprisoned there. Some, including future United States Declaration of Independence signatory John Witherspoon, escaped using the classic bedsheets-tied-together routine. Like Dunblane Cathedral, the castle was a roofless ruin by the nineteenth century, but also like the cathedral restoration work began in the 1880s. After having been in his family for over four hundred years, Douglas Stuart, 20th Earl of Moray, gifted Doune Castle to the nation in 1984. It is now under the stewardship of Historic Environment Scotland.

Today Doune Castle is perhaps visited as much for its pop culture connections as for its storied history. As well as doubling as Castle Leoch in Outlander, it also ‘played’ Camelot, Castle Anthrax, Swamp Castle, the castle of Guy de Lombard, and a couple of other unnamed locations in the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The castle used to stage successful Monty Python-themed events, and even today, fifty years after shooting, there is still a range of Python products in the gift shop. I nearly bought a pair of ‘Ministry of Silly Walks’ socks to go in my son’s Christmas stocking, until it dawned on me that was a pop culture reference likely to go way over his head. There is also a selection of Outlander gifts available.

Doune Castle’s first big screen role was in the 1952 MGM production of Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe starring Robert Taylor and Elizabeth Taylor, and subsequent appearances include Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) and Outlaw King (2018). It was used as a location in the 1996 BBC TV adaptation of Scott’s novel and served as Winterfell in the first series of Game of Thrones (2011).

Destination or Diversion

Its starry history and star-studded screen appearances make Doune Castle a must-see, but a wander round its rooms and halls take no more than an hour, so it is classed as a diversion. Anyone visiting might want to do as I did and combine it with a trip to Dunblane Cathedral, and they could also stop at the David Stirling Memorial which is one the road between the two sites. There is also a host of nearby attractions – including Bannockburn, Stirling Castle, and the Wallace Monument – to help the visitor make a day or weekend of it.