If you happen to be sailing up the Firth of Clyde, past the island of Cumbrae towards Greenock and Port Glasgow, you could not fail to notice Kelburn Castle, two miles south of the seaside resort of Largs. It is, by far, the most colourful castle in Scotland. Admittedly this is due to the fact that its south facing façade, including its windows, chimneys and downpipes, has become a giant multi-coloured mural, the work of four of Brazil’s best known graffiti artists, Os Gemeos (the twins), Nina and Nunca. Because the harling (or pebbledash applied to protect the soft sandstone on the outside of the castle) is soon to be taken down and the building re-rendered, it presented us with a great opportunity to do something creative with the outside wall in the meantime.
The Graffiti Project, as it came to be known, is the brainchild of my 29 and 26 year old son and daughter, David and Alice Boyle, and has already generated considerable interest among the world’s graffiti aficionados, featuring in magazine and television programmes all over Europe and Latin America. The sight has shocked some purists in Britain, but, on the whole, the general public seem to have approved and even Historic Scotland, which tends to be traditionalist in its views, is impressed by the results.
Kelburn Castle has been the home of the Boyle family for at least eight hundred years and the seat of the Earls of Glasgow since the then laird, David Boyle, was ennobled in 1703. No one is sure when the original Norman Keep was built, maybe about 1250, but we do know the Norman family of de Boyville, later shortened to Boyle, have owned their lands in this part of Ayrshire since 1143. In recent publications on Scottish clans and families, the Boyles tend to merit only a brief mention or get omitted altogether, yet Kelburn Castle is probably the oldest castle in Scotland to have been continuously inhabited by the same family, and, in the nineteenth century the Earls of Glasgow were among Scotland’s wealthiest landowners.
In a recent booklet on Scottish surnames, Boyle is cited as the eighty second most common, yet is cursorily dismissed with the comment ‘no clan association’. In the contemporary pecking order of important Scottish families, the Boyles have two undeserved disadvantages. The first is that a majority of people assume the name to be Irish and therefore not Scottish at all. The second is that we don’t have a tartan. Unlike most other lowland families (and of course there are many more lowland families than highland) we have never thought it necessary to invent an artificial tartan for ourselves. There are a number of highland clans and their septs who have genuine claim to authentic historical tartans established before 1820 but almost all the lowland families have had tartans artificially created for themselves in the twentieth century. Largely influenced by the views of my father and grandfather, we Boyles are more purist. As a lowland family, our kilts have been made up from the shepherd’s plaid, a black and white or brown and white check, which anyone and everyone is entitled to wear. Now that nearly every other lowland family has invented a tartan for itself or considers itself entitled to wear some already existing highland tartan, the plain black and white plaid now stands out as being particularly distinguished. However, that does not impress those who compile books on highland tartans.
On the question of Boyle being an Irish name, in our case this is simply wrong. Although there are indeed many Irish Boyles whose name can be traced to some Gaelic origin, these have no connection with us. We are in fact a Norman family, originally called de Boyville, who came over to Britain soon after William the Conqueror and settled in various parts of the country, including Wales and Cumberland. The Welsh branch went later to Ireland and were the ancestors of the Earls of Cork and Shannon, which accounts for other Irish Boyles with whom we do have a tenuous link. There were also a number of Boyles from our part of Ayrshire who crossed the water in the sixteenth and seventeenth century and settled in Northern Ireland, becoming one of that class referred to by Americans as the Scots-Irish. Our branch of de Boyvilles, however, has no direct connection with Ireland.
When King David the First came to the throne of Scotland in 1124, having spent all his early life at the Norman Court in London, he invited a number of his Norman friends to accompany him, including a powerful baron called Hugo de Movville, whom David appointed hereditary Great Constable of Scotland. He, in his turn, parcelled out land under the old feudal system to his friends and supporters, one of which was the family of de Boyville who thus acquired the lands of Kelburn in 1143. We have been here ever since.
The family (by then called Boyle) fought under Alexander III at the battle of Largs (1263) and under Walter the Steward at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. The eldest son of the laird was killed fighting for James III at the Battle of Sauchieburn in 1488 and another elder son was killed at the Battle of Pinkie in 1547.
In 1568, John Boyle of Kelburn raised 100 men and marched them over the hill to fight for Mary Queen of Scots. On the way, he received news of her defeat at the Battle of Langside and her flight to England and turned sadly home. It was this John Boyle and his father who made a small fortune in shipping and began enlarging the castle at Kelburn which until then, we suspect, was no more than a traditional Norman keep.
By the beginning of the 17th century, the Boyles had become a wealthy and influential family in the north of Ayrshire, embroiled in business and politics. It was David Boyle of Kelburn (1666 – 1733) a distinguished Scottish statesman, privy counsellor and Lord of the Treasury among other appointments, who was created Lord Boyle in 1699 and first Earl of Glasgow in 1703, largely in recognition of his work as one of the leading architects of the controversial Act of Union, the treaty that bound England and Scotland together in one parliament at Westminster and marked the creation of Great Britain.
In 1700, castles had become unfashionable among the ruling classes, regarded as primitive and uncomfortable in comparison with English stately homes and David Boyle, the first Earl, planned and commissioned a mansion house to be joined onto the old 1580 castle, doubling the size of Kelburn. A Victorian wing was added in 1884, which gives Kelburn the correct impression of being three quite separate buildings joined together, something that has grown organically, as opposed to the result of some architectural master plan. This unplanned mixture of different historical influences, gives Kelburn its unique architectural character and its particular charm.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Earls of Glasgow were considerable landowners, at one time controlling 250,000 acres of Scotland and even parts of Northumberland in England. Unfortunately though, the fifth and sixth earls dissipated the fortune and very nearly ruined the family. James, the fifth Earl, was an inveterate gambler who spent thousands on race horses, and was easily recognisable as a larger-than-life character who would be seen at all the fashionable race meetings in mid Victorian Britain, arguing with his trainers and firing jockeys that lost the race for him. His half brother, George Frederick, a very different character, who became the sixth Earl of Glasgow in 1869, spent the rest of the Boyle money building cathedrals and endowing Episcopal churches all over Scotland. Episcopal Church leaders still refer to him officially as ‘the Good Earl’, but since he ended up in debt to the tune of nearly a million pounds in 1888, he is not regarded in such high esteem by the Boyle family. Nearly all the Boyle lands, including the island of Cumbrae across the sea from Kelburn, had to be sold to pay off the debt and Kelburn estate remains in the family only because the sixth Earl’s cousin, David Boyle of Shewalton, later to become seventh Earl of Glasgow, sold his own estate in Irvine to buy it back. All the other lands, town houses and stately homes were lost to the family.
From 1890 onwards, the Earls of Glasgow have struggled to maintain Kelburn but there has never been any wavering in their determination to do so. The seventh, eighth and ninth earls were all distinguished naval officers, the seventh governed New Zealand from 1894 to 1898, the eighth was convenor of Ayr County Council for ten years and my father, who died in 1984, became an admiral and was awarded the DSC for his part in the sinking the Bismarck in 1941.
My early life was mostly spent working in the film industry and making documentaries for television but after my father’s death I have concentrated more on trying to make Kelburn at least pay for itself. The grounds around the castle are known for their natural beauty and the Kel burn, a precipitous mountain stream that runs beside the castle, has formed over thousands of years a spectacular glen of deep gorges and impressive waterfalls. The Kelburn glen begins some five hundred feet above the castle and has paths winding up on both sides with bridges crossing the burn at strategic points. Two hundred yards above the castle is a famous monument designed by Robert Adam to commemorate the third Earl of Glasgow, who died at a relatively young age from wounds in battle.
All this, with Kelburn’s historic gardens and special trees were opened up to the public in 1977 and Kelburn Country Centre is now one of Scotland’s major visitor attractions, providing horse riding, falconry and all sorts of added attractions for children and the family visitor. The castle itself is available for functions such as dinners, weddings and corporate entertaining and can be hired out for special groups wanting to stay. At the same time, it remains our home and has always been lived in. My son, David, who is 29 and an architect, works from Kelburn at the present time and is as determined as me to see that Kelburn has a secure future. My wife works mostly from Glasgow now and Alice, our daughter, is trying to make her way in London, but they too return to Kelburn whenever they can. On three or four long weekends a year, we fill the house with all our friends and relations and that, I always think, is one of the pleasures and advantages of having a large historic house as a home. Almost everything else to do with maintaining a castle is a disadvantage. It is primarily love of the place, its beauty, its setting and it eccentricities that have kept the Boyles steadfastly rooted to this spot for over 800 years.
2009 is the year of the Homecoming in Scotland when many Americans, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders of Scottish descent will return for a week or so to the land of their ancestors. There are hundreds of thousands of Scottish Boyles spread all over the world, many of whom, I suspect, will be unaware that they originate from this part of Scotland. I am hoping some of them may come and visit us at Kelburn in July or August of next year when both David and I will be here to welcome them.