Penkill Castle facts for kids
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Penkill Castle is an old castle from the 1500s. It has been changed and added to over many years. You can find it about half a mile south of a village called Old Dailly. This is near Girvan in south Ayrshire, Scotland.
Contents
The Story of Penkill Castle
How the Castle Grew
The first part of Penkill Castle was a square tower built in the 1500s. It was built by a family called the Boyds. They were related to the Earls of Kilmarnock. In the 1600s, the castle was made bigger. It became an L-shaped building.
Over time, the castle started to fall apart. By the early 1800s, it was almost a ruin. But then, in 1857, a big project began. The castle was carefully fixed up. A new part was also added on the east side.
The Lairds of Penkill
The owner of Penkill Castle was known as the Laird of Penkill. This title started in the 1500s with Adam Boyd. For many years, all the Lairds were men. But in the late 1800s, something changed. The 14th Laird was an artist named Alice Boyd. She was the first woman to hold the title. Alice Boyd made the castle grounds even bigger.
The last Laird of Penkill was Evelyn May Courtney-Boyd. She sold the castle in the 1980s. After that, it was bought by an American lawyer, Elton Eckstrand. He continued to restore the castle. Penkill Castle has been sold a few more times since then. Today, it is still a private home.
Penkill and the Pre-Raphaelites
Penkill Castle has a cool connection to an art group called the Pre-Raphaelites. This group of artists and writers lived in Britain in the 1800s. They liked to paint in a very detailed and colorful style.
In the late 1850s, a Pre-Raphaelite artist named William Bell Scott became friends with Alice Boyd. He visited Penkill Castle often. Once, he painted a series of pictures on the staircase walls. These pictures told the story of a poem called The Kingis Quair. It was written by King James I of Scotland. William Bell Scott passed away at Penkill Castle in 1890.
Other famous Pre-Raphaelite artists and writers also visited the castle. One of them was Christina Rossetti, a well-known poet. She loved Penkill Castle and wrote about how beautiful it was. She said, "Even Naples in imagination cannot efface the quiet fertile comeliness of Penkill in reality." This shows how much she enjoyed her time there.
