Glenapp Castle

"A stunning castle hotel in Ballantrae offering a luxurious stay with traditional Scottish interiors." - The MICHELIN Guide

"A luxurious hotel located in South Ayrshire, Scotland, offering an opulent stay with suites featuring classic décor and experiences such as the Hebridean Sea Safari. The castle has historical significance and boasts colorful legends and past visitors including Winston Churchill." - Leslie Jamison

"If nothing else, Glenapp Castle—once the home of P&O supremo Lord Inchcape—proves that this criminally overlooked corner of Ayrshire does grand baronial-style architecture, moody coastline, rolling moorland, picturesque livestock, and eccentric aristocrats just as well as anywhere else in Scotland. The castle is approached by means of a lovely mile-long drive that winds its way up through a densely forested gorge so wildly luxuriant, so thick with ferns, firs, rhododendrons, and redwoods as to seem almost otherworldly. This pleasantly disorientating sensation is dispelled as you emerge at the threshold of the castle itself, a textbook affair of towers, turrets, and battlements. From one side, you look onto an immaculately ordered walled garden by Gertrude Jekyll; from the other, across the Irish Sea towards Ailsa Craig, the Mull of Kintyre, and the Isle of Arran. Glenapp reopened in 2021 after extensive renovation. A fantastic new four-bedroom penthouse suite was unveiled. The entire place is a paradise for families and anyone with an outdoorsy bent. The hotel’s Hebridean Sea Safari—a tour of the neighboring islands with an experienced RNLI skipper and a marine biologist, glamping in fancy tents on remote shores, catered to by a private chef—is not to be missed." - Steve King

"Ayrshire doesn’t get the headlines or rapturous odes that the Highlands do, but this rugged coastal stretch in southwestern Scotland is filled with under-the-radar gems like Glenapp Castle. The property traces its roots to 1870, when it was built for the industrialist James Hunter, and it’s an imposing structure with sandstone battlements, turrets, and towers—made all the more dramatic when approached via the mile-long driveway that cuts through a forest thick with redwoods and firs. Expect stately trappings like formal gardens and croquet lawns, but don’t be surprised by the adventurous spirit that suffuses the place: Activities include archery, clay pigeon shooting, salmon fishing, falconry displays, and foraging. Post-lockdown, the property welcomed a sprawling new penthouse, tucked up in the castle’s eaves, the perfect vantage point from which to take in views of the Ailsa Craig, the Isle of Arran, and the Mull of Kintyre. The suite is named The Endeavour, after the airplane of a former owner’s daughter, aviatrix Elsie Mackay, who attempted to become the first woman to cross the Atlantic a year after Charles Lindbergh and sadly disappeared somewhere along the way." - Ramsay Short

"This intensely romantic gothic hotel in Ballantrae, Ayrshire, was once the family seat of the Earl of Inchcape. Concealed behind wrought iron gates, this hotel remains one of the country’s finest examples of the Scottish Baronial school of architecture: a feast of turrets, battlements and soaring domes. The gardens, meanwhile, are a horticulturist’s dream. Its exotic plants date back to Victorian times, there’s a forest of giant sequoias – even a surprisingly grand oak sprung from a seed originally planted by Charles II at Longleat."