Highland fling

In its heyday, Dunrobin Castle held elaborate shooting parties for the Victorian nobility, including the Queen herself. Now the decision to declutter the attics has brought all sorts of treasures to light. Mary Miers reports

Dunrobin Castle in Sutherland, the most-magnificent building in the north of Scotland

Dunrobin Castle is unquestionably the most magnificent building in the north of Scotland. A fairytale vision of spired tourelles riding high above trees against the bare shoulder of Ben Bhraggie, it owes its Renaissance-château appearance to a Victorian remodelling, although, unlike so many 19th-century ‘castles’, its gleaming ashlar walls encase a medieval keep. The 13th-century seat of the Earls of Sutherland grew piecemeal through the 17th and 18th centuries to form the southern part of the palatial buildings we see today, elevated dramatically above the Moray Firth.

The public rooms are the result of a 1919 rebuilding of the Victorian ranges following a dramatic fire. Designed by Scottish Arts and Crafts architect Sir Robert Lorimer, they are regarded as among his most beautiful interiors and provide an outstanding setting for the famous collection of family portraits by artists such as Sir Thomas Lawrence, George Romney, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Allan Ramsay, as well as 18th-century furniture and Mortlake tapestries, marble busts, paintings by Tintoretto, Sir David Wilkie and Michael Wright, and many other treasures. To create the illusion of movement, each drawing differs slightly from the one before it. The animators' drawings are traced or photocopied onto transparent acetate sheets called cels, which are filled in with paints in assigned colors or tones on the side opposite the line drawings. The completed character cels are photographed one-by-one against a painted background by a rostrum camera onto motion picture film . The traditional cel animation process became obsolete by the beginning of the 21st century. Today, animators' drawings and the backgrounds are either scanned into or drawn directly into a computer system.

"Unlike so many 19^thcentury 'castles', Dunrobin's gleaming walls encase a genuine medieval keep"

These rooms have been open to the public since 1973, but a new layer of Dunrobin’s history has recently been uncovered with the decision to declutter attics and cellars that had lain undisturbed for decades. Rare objects on public display, such as two of the earliest vacuum cleaners and a bell-pull system with miles of brass wiring still in perfect condition, touch on this Upstairs, Downstairs aspect of country-house life.

However, the picture has now been greatly enriched by the discovery of countless other household artefacts, many of which will be offered in the Dunrobin Attic Sale at Bonhams’ Edinburgh saleroom on 24 February. They represent a fascinating time capsule of domestic operations on a Downton Abbey scale. Maids’ bedrooms tucked into the eaves of the earlier ranges had been reconfigured to become porcelain stores, with rows of footbaths, floral jugs and washbasins, chamber pots and piles of crested dinner services, all jostling for space with meat domes, tiered oyster holders and untold numbers of copper vessels and glass carafes.

The maids’ rooms on the attic floors, where many treasures were found

Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland, by Sir Joshua Reynolds Her 1785 marriage to George Granville Leveson-Gower transformed an ancient Scottish earldom into one of Victorian Britain’s richest dynasties

2nd Duke of Sutherland, the creator of Dunrobin, a ducal palace in the wilds

Duchess Harriet, wife of the 2nd Duke of Sutherland, by Franz Winterhalter

In the Victorian wing, rooms that had served as boys’ dormitories when the castle was a public school in the 1960s had been appropriated for extra storage: one housed stacks of gilt picture frames; another, paintings, including a portrait of Millicent, the Duchess of Sutherland’s pet dog, with a box containing sugar moulds and other lead objects whose purpose has long been forgotten. In the cellars, where huge pipes carry water from the river to combat fire, one room had shelves lined with green baize that was piled high with silver; another had luggage. There was also a room filled with Scottish arms and armour, including a pair of Scottish 18th century flintlock belt pistols made by Alexander Campbell of Doune - and one with a large collection of tartan ware. Most thrilling of all was the discovery of several rooms that even the castle manager had never entered. There, among the cobwebs, a row of marble and plaster busts on display in the castle peered through the darkness, among them Queen Victoria.

"Queen Victoria was met by the 3rd Duke driving his own engine, dressed in a 'curious get up'"

Dunrobin’s lavish remodelling in the 1840s, to a design based on the Château de Chenonceau, trumpeted the fantastic wealth of the Leveson-Gowers, whose territorial empire combined virtually the entire county of Sutherland with more than 30,000 acres of England. The transformation of an ancient Scottish earldom into one of Victorian Britain’s richest dynasties was the result of the marriage in 1785 of Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland, to George Granville Leveson-Gower (from 1803, the 2nd Marquess of Stafford), whose soubriquet ‘the Leviathan of Wealth’ reflected that fact that he was heir to three estates in England and one of the greatest fortunes of the Industrial Revolution – most lucratively the growing profits of the Bridgewater Canal, inherited from his uncle.

Although somewhat overshadowed by his vivacious, artistic wife, the 2nd Marquess of Stafford was nonetheless a great art collector and agricultural improver, whose support of Catholic Emancipation and the Reform Bill accorded with his Liberal views; in 1833, the year he died, he was elevated to a Dukedom.

Francis Chantrey’s statue of the 1st Duke of Sutherland rises from a monumental plinth above Dunrobin. However, the creation of a ducal palace in the wilds was the initiative of the 2nd Duke (1786-1861), who inherited shares in the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, in addition to the Sutherland fortune, and was addicted to building. He had already engaged Sir Charles Barry to build Trentham Hall in Staffordshire and to complete his magnificent London residence Stafford House, and would later employ him at Cliveden.

At Dunrobin, Barry was largely responsible for the scheme that tripled the size of the castle between 1845 and 1851. With the Aberdeen architect William Leslie, Barry also designed the Italianate garden, a richly patterned carpet of formal parterres spread out below the castle in glorious counterpoint to the rugged hills beyond.

By now, the Highland Season was already in fashion. This was the annual summer migration of the leisured classes, who flocked north with their guns, rods, sketchbooks and copies of Walter Scott to enjoy a sporting paradise in a sublime landscape as potato blight, typhoid and starvation stalked the glens. A major incentive for the Duke’s extravagant expenditure was the prospect of a visit to Dunrobin by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who were yet to establish their own Highland holiday retreat in Upper Deeside. A lower wing linking the grand new public rooms to the earlier ranges was furnished as the royal suite, with an oriel window, flanked by pepperpot turrets, providing wonderful sea views from the Queen’s bedroom. She would later describe the “beautiful bed with white and gold flowers and doves at each corner”, which can still be seen in the castle. The room had walls of “pale blue and white panels; blue satin spangled with yellow leaves”, with “furniture and carpet to match”.

In the event, the Queen never made it to Dunrobin with Prince Albert; it was not until September 1872 that she came to stay for the first time, as guest of the 3rd Duke and his wife Anne, Mistress of the Robes and Victoria’s close friend and companion. She travelled north by train with Princess Beatrice, to be met by the Duke driving his own engine, dressed in “a curious get up”.

He was mad about mechanical engineering and had financed the building of the Highland Railway. At Golspie Station, they were greeted by the Duke of Sutherland Volunteers, “very handsome in red jackets and Sutherland tartan kilts”. The village was decked out with heather and flowers, and “everywhere… the loyalty and enthusiasm was very great,” the Queen enthused in her journal.

The final animated piece is output to one of several delivery media, including traditional 35 mm film and newer media such as digital video. The "look" of traditional cel animation is still preserved, and the character animators' work has remained essentially the same over the past 70 years. Some animation producers have used the term "tradigital" to describe cel animation which makes extensive use of computer technology. Examples of traditionally animated feature films include Pinocchio (United States, 1940), Animal Farm (United Kingdom, 1954), and Akira (Japan, 1988). Traditional animated films which were produced with the aid of computer technology include The Lion King (US, 1994) Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (Spirited Away) (Japan, 2001), and Les Triplettes de Belleville (France, 2003).

Left & below Treasures in Bonhams’ Attic Sale

This was the heyday of Dunrobin, when, as well as being the administrative centre of a vast landholding that stretched 1,300,000 acres as far as the North and West Coasts, the castle served – as it would until well into the 20th century – as a grand shooting lodge, a summer residence for sport and socialising. Tartan proliferated in dress and upholstery, stag heads peered down from billiard-room walls, guests were serenaded by pipers, and entertainments included Highland Games and balls.

During the day, the ladies would sally forth on walking and sketching expeditions, while the men went stalking with a retinue of head stalkers, head keeper, under stalker, and pony and kennel boys.

Before the family arrived, additional servants would be sent ahead from their English houses to prepare the castle for the season. In the later 19th century, WCs and bathrooms were installed at Dunrobin – the latter created in turrets by removing spiral staircases – and, soon after, gas fires were introduced to some of the rooms, but, until then, scores of housemaids were required to carry coal and water to the bedrooms.

The survival of so many objects relating to this now vanished way of life is remarkable. The forthcoming Dunrobin Attic Sale offers an opportunity to own some of these glorious objects – tangible reminders of an astonishing château in the wilds that encapsulates stirring history, unbridled wealth and the romanticism of the Highlands.

Mary Miers is the author of Highland Retreats: The Architecture and Interiors of Scotland’s Romantic North.