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Photo: Colin, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
A flamboyant Victorian Gothic House set in parkland planted with species from all over the world. The Crichton-Stuarts held extensive lands in Wales and elsewhere, and became even richer from developing industry around Cardiff. The 19th-century 3rd Marquess was a proto-Walt Disney who sought to recreate the Middle Ages to his own fun specifications, and restored Cardiff Castle and nearby Castle Coch. Mount Stuart was his next project. It's built in warm red sandstone, with a notable marble hall and chapel, and richly decorated. In 2016 a Shakespeare First folio, worth several million pounds, was discovered in the library - this can only be viewed by special appointment. The house is sometimes booked for private events so check ahead.
Mount Stuart House, on the east coast of the Isle of Bute, Scotland, is a country house built in the Gothic Revival style and the ancestral home of the Marquesses of Bute. It was designed by Sir Robert Rowand Anderson for John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute in the late 1870s, replacing an earlier house by Alexander McGill, which burnt down in 1877. The house is a Category A listed building.
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Opens May - July under the Scotland's Gardens scheme. A garden with a Victorian glazed fernery. The 1000 year old king fern is Britain’s oldest.
The deep loch is stocked with trout, and pike, perch and roach may also be fished. Rowing boats and rods for hire. In summer 2018 Bluebird K7, the restored record-breaking jet-powered hydroplane of Donald Campbell (1921-1967), undertook trials here.
A "compound" castle, unusual fog the Monmouth Rebellion. From the 19th century the Marquesses of Bute made cor Scotland, first built in Norman times. It has a circular curtain wall: four towers were later added, of which only the "Pigeon Tower" survives. In 1660 it was partially demolished by Cromwell’s forces after they had been temporarily garrisoned there, and then again 15 years later durinnsiderable efforts to restore it, or at least to their view of how it ought to have appeared if the Middle Ages had done things properly.