This print of Doune Castle dates from the 1850's. The artist was Billings, the engraver is Le Keux.
Doune Castle ~ Artist: Billings
Castle of Doune was the theater of several important deeds, and the theme of more than one pathetic ballad. Doune Castle overhangs the point of a narrow green promontory, with the Teith rolling at its base on one side, and the mountain torrent of Ardoch descending with its tribute from the other.
According to tradition, the founder of Doune Castle is the unfortunate Murdoch, duke of Albany, whose fate we have already noticed; but it is evidently of much earlier date, and belongs to the first-rate order of Scottish fortresses.
At one end of the front, a spacious square tower rises to the height of eighty feet, succeeded by another of inferior dimensions from behind the opposite extremity. The great hall, or state chamber between the towers, is seventy feet long, and that in the great tower, forty-five by thirty feet. The kitchen fire-place alone seems of sufficient capacity to have accommodated with warmth and viands a full host of retainers. The whole structure, surrounded by a back wall forty feet high, forms an ample quadrangle of massive architecture.
In the reign of James V., Sir Tames Stewart of Beath, ancestor of the Moray family, was appointed constable of the Castle; and his son obtained a charter, under the great seal, of certain lands to be called the barony of Doune.
In the succeeding reign, it served as a retreat for the loyalists of that unhappy period. The demesnes of the castle having been erected into a barony prior to the abolition of hereditary jurisdiction in the year 1748, courts of law were held in it; but, happily for the Scottish peasantry, these "hereditary and exclusive privileges" were thenceforth solemnly transferred to the executive government of the country.
Queen Margaret and her unfortunate grand-daughter Mary, are said to have frequently resided here.
