Inveraray Castle: ‘Our Scottish estate spans 75,000 acres – it takes 10 industries to keep it afloat’
Her late mother-in-law, Iona, Duchess of Argyll, certainly got her hands dirty. When she married Ian Campbell, Marquess of Lorne, in 1964, she joined a family where there was no love lost between father and son.
Ian Lorne – who succeeded his father, Ian Campbell, 11th Duke of Argyll, as Duke of Argyll in 1973 – grew up in Europe and watched his father first divorce his mother, Louise “Oui Oui” Clews, and then, within a fortnight, marry the socialite Margaret Sweeny. Later, “Marg of Arg” would become infamous thanks to a series of compromising photographs found by the duke in her study. The couple’s ensuing divorce became the subject of a BBC three-part drama, “A Very British Scandal”, which aired in 2021.
The duke had inherited the heavily indebted Inveraray in 1948, before his marriage to Margaret. Inside the castle, as he recalled, “twisted drainpipes hung down mildewed walls like lifeless snakes”.
When he died, he left his son with much of the same. Though Margaret had ploughed money into the house’s restoration, “My grandfather didn’t do any of the things which would have helped my father when he inherited, in terms of taxation,” says the duke. “He was left with a broke estate and big death duties, so he sold the island of Iona. He had to get money from somewhere.”
The new Argylls had had their feet under the table for less than three years when, on Bonfire Night 1975, a fire broke out in Iona’s wardrobe, shot up a void and destroyed the roof and the two upper floors of the underinsured Inveraray. The townsfolk, gathered for the festivities, rallied around the duchess and saved almost two-thirds of the castle’s contents.
“It was a tricky time,” says the duke, who was seven at the time of the fire. “We didn’t have the money to repair it. Mum and Dad could have said ‘to hell with it’ and built a bungalow, but they were young and enthusiastic and decided that they would rebuild it.”
