Cawdor Castle

The preserved skeleton of a holly tree stands in the vault of Cawdor Castle — the tower was raised around it in the fourteenth century, and the trunk has stood there ever since. The castle sits in the Highland hinterland south of Nairn, and the Thane of Cawdor's family still lives within its walls.

Cawdor is a fourteenth-century tower house expanded over six centuries into a lived-in family home that happens to share its name with Shakespeare's Scottish play. Macbeth's title of Thane of Cawdor put the castle into world literature, though the historical king predates the building by three centuries — a discrepancy the family has cheerfully exploited ever since. The three gardens are each distinct in character: the Walled Garden with its holly-hedge maze coiling around a bronze minotaur — admired from the edge rather than entered — the Flower Garden's summer borders, and the Wild Garden running down through native pine and birch, where woodland walks follow the Cawdor Burn. Inside, tapestries and family portraits hang in rooms that are dusted because someone actually lives there, which is precisely the charm.