Qualla: Blair Castle https://qualla.com/blair-castle en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:24 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/j/6/blair-castle-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Blair Castle https://qualla.com/blair-castle Blair Castle: Introduction https://qualla.com/blair-castle/ Photo credit Matthias Bethke, CC BY-SA 4.0. Every year, the Atholl Highlanders parade in the grounds of Blair Castle in Perthshire, wearing kilts and carrying rifles. They are the only legal private army in Europe, and their existence is owed to an afternoon in 1844 when Queen Victoria, visiting the castle with Prince Albert, was so impressed by the men who escorted her that she granted them the right to bear arms. It is a peculiar distinction -- a ceremonial relic from a castle whose history is anything but ceremonial. Blair Castle has stood at the strategic gateway to the central Scottish Highlands for over seven hundred years, and the story of who held it, who besieged it, and who was besieging whom is one of the most tangled in Scottish military history.

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Image: Matthias Bethke | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/j/6/blair-castle-wp/gfj6-blair-castle-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Blair Castle: Built by an Interloper https://qualla.com/blair-castle/ Photo credit Eusebius, CC BY 3.0. The castle's origin story involves a dispute between neighbors. In 1269, while David Strathbogie, Earl of Atholl, was away on crusade, John Comyn, Lord of Badenoch, began building a tower on the Earl's land. When Strathbogie returned and discovered the intrusion, he complained to...

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Image: Eusebius | CC BY 3.0

]]> Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/j/6/blair-castle-wp/gfj6-blair-castle-built-by-an-interloper.mp3 0:06 2 full Blair Castle: A Family Divided https://qualla.com/blair-castle/ Photo credit Balon Greyjoy, CC BY-SA 3.0. Blair Castle's most dramatic episode came during the first Jacobite rising in 1689, and it turned on the divided loyalties of a single family. The Marquess of Atholl, head of Clan Murray, chose to support the new government of William and Mary -- but his factor, Patrick Stewart o...

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Image: Balon Greyjoy | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/j/6/blair-castle-wp/gfj6-blair-castle-a-family-divided.mp3 0:06 3 full Blair Castle: Besieged Again -- and Again https://qualla.com/blair-castle/ Photo credit Holger Uwe Schmitt, CC BY-SA 4.0. The castle's strategic importance drew conflict like a magnet. During the English Civil War, the Murrays supported the Royalist cause, and Cromwell's army seized Blair Castle after his invasion of Scotland in 1650. In the Forty-Five -- the final Jacobite rising of 1745 -- Blair C...

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Image: Holger Uwe Schmitt | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/j/6/blair-castle-wp/gfj6-blair-castle-besieged-again-and-again.mp3 0:06 4 full Blair Castle: Victorian Transformation https://qualla.com/blair-castle/ Photo credit Michael Hanselmann, CC BY-SA 3.0. The castle that visitors see today is largely a Victorian creation. In the 1870s, the architect David Bryce remodeled the entire building for the seventh Duke of Atholl in the Scots Baronial style, adding the ballroom and unifying the sprawling complex of medieval towers and eigh...

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Image: Michael Hanselmann | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/j/6/blair-castle-wp/gfj6-blair-castle-victorian-transformation.mp3 0:06 5 full