Qualla: Glamis Castle

Glamis Castle: Introduction

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit LeCardinal, CC BY-SA 3.0. Every family has secrets. The Bowes-Lyons, Earls of Strathmore and Kinghorne, whose family seat is Glamis Castle in Angus, Scotland, have had theirs examined by outsiders for over a century and a half. The legend of the Monster of Glamis -- a hideously deformed child supposedly born to the family, kept hidden in a bricked-up room, and shown only to each successive Earl and his heir on the heir's twenty-first birthday -- has resisted every attempt at confirmation or debunking. Virginia Gabriel, the singer and composer who stayed at the castle in 1870, described strange sounds and an atmosphere of concealment. The family has never confirmed the story. They have never convincingly denied it either. The secret, if it was ever real, has been kept.

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Image: LeCardinal | CC BY-SA 3.0

Glamis Castle: Murder and the Mists of Strathmore

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carlos Menendez San Juan, CC BY-SA 2.0. Glamis Castle sits in the broad, fertile valley of Strathmore, between the Sidlaw Hills and the Grampian Mountains, about twenty kilometres inland from the North Sea. The estate covers more than fifty-seven square kilometres, and the castle itself -- its towers and turrets rising...

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Image: Carlos Menendez San Juan | CC BY-SA 2.0

Glamis Castle: Ghosts, Gamblers, and the White Lady

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. No castle in Scotland carries more supernatural baggage than Glamis. The Monster is only the most famous of its legends. The tale of Earl Beardie -- a fifteenth-century lord who insisted on playing cards on the Sabbath, was warned to stop, declared he would play until doomsday or...

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Image: Public domain

Glamis Castle: A Royal Childhood

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Julien.scavini, CC BY-SA 4.0. Glamis Castle entered the modern consciousness primarily through its connection to the British royal family. Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon grew up here, the ninth child of the fourteenth Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne. She married Prince Albert, Duke of York, in 1923, and when he u...

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Image: Julien.scavini | CC BY-SA 4.0

Glamis Castle: Stones and Shadows

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The approach to Glamis Castle is lined with four bronze statues placed in the seventeenth century: Charles I in boots, James VI in a stole, Charles II in Roman dress, and James VII as he appeared in his Whitehall portrait. The first two were sculpted by Arnold Quellin, and they s...

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Image: Public domain