A 600-Year-Old Money Pit in the Scottish Highlands

ISLE OF MULL, Scotland — Anyone who has despaired over home improvement should spare a thought for Sir Lachlan Hector Charles Maclean of Duart and Morven.

The Scottish lord has been repairing his home since he inherited it from his father in 1990, with no end in sight.

His is no ordinary house. Rather, it is a crumbling 14th-century castle — with a dungeon — that has collapsed ceilings and rainwater seeping through its 16-foot-thick walls pretty much all of the time — even during summer, which can be exceedingly wet and blustery in Scotland.

The cost of repairs? So far, 1.5 million pounds, or $1.94 million, and counting.

Located on the Isle of Mull, off the western coast of Scotland, his home, Duart Castle, is the ancestral seat of the Macleans, one of the oldest clans in the Scottish Highlands. The 74-year-old chatelain’s ancestors have been involved in centuries of battles pitting Catholics against Protestants and the Scottish against the English in rivalries that still resonate.

“What does one do with a property like this?” Sir Lachlan, the 28th chief of the clan, asked rhetorically one recent afternoon as he sipped tea in his living room, probably one of the snugger parts of the castle where he and his wife, Rosie, have retreated, though it was still mildly damp with a whiff of stale curry.

Strong rains lashed against the windows, and the constant buzz of drilling forced him to speak up. The Macleans’ private living room was cluttered with modern bric-a-brac while, just below, tourists tramped about in the stately banquet hall looking at clan paraphernalia and trying to locate a public toilet. There are, in fact, two toilets, but they are both unusable — one put in nearly a century ago, and another 600 years ago.

“A lot of people wouldn’t want to live here,” Sir Lachlan said, before proceeding to list, like an overly candid real estate agent, the property’s shortcomings. “It’s cold, it’s never really warm. It’s very windy and it’s very wet — and that’s not a very good combination. Some people must be thinking, ‘What a silly old fool living there.’”

Perched on a craggy cliff on an island slightly bigger than New York City, the castle has, at various stages in its history, been invaded, attacked and demolished by rival clans loyal to Scottish kings or by troops fighting on behalf of Oliver Cromwell, the antimonarchist revolutionary.

A room in Duart Castle. “A lot of people wouldn’t want to live here,” Sir Lachlan said. “It’s cold, it’s never really warm. It’s very windy and it’s very wet — and that’s not a very good combination.” Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times
At one point, the castle’s dungeon held Spanish prisoners after a failed attempt to invade England in the 16th century. The clan had lands on the Isles of Mull, Coll, Tiree and Jura — all also along the west coast of Scotland.

In modern times, however, Duart Castle has been under assault primarily by Scotland’s relentlessly bad weather.

Befitting a modern-day clan chief, whose complete title is Sir Lachlan Hector Charles Maclean of Duart and Morven, 12th Baronet, Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, Deputy Lieutenant and Eighth Lord Maclean (he goes by Sir Lachlan), his primary job is to defend the castle from decay and, more important, from oblivion.

There are 283 days of rainfall on average per year on the Isle of Mull. When winds are particularly strong, he said, the only way to leave the castle, which is surrounded on three sides by water, is by crawling on his hands and knees down the steps of the main entrance.

Duart, which means black point in Gaelic, a nod to the black volcanic rock where the castle stands, is one of the last surviving clan castles still privately owned.

Maintaining it is a moral responsibility, Sir Lachlan said. “It is a sort of focal point for the clan,” he added, as he carefully descended a narrow staircase that was designed in 1360 to be just wide enough to allow one man wielding a sword. (A sign nonetheless read: “We apologize for any congestion on the stairs.”)

The castle receives about 25,000 visitors a year, some of them part of the Maclean diaspora living in the United States, Canada and Australia. The name Maclean can be spelled in at least 15 ways.

People are increasingly searching for their heritage and their identity, Sir Lachlan said, leading some to visit Duart Castle.