Saddell Castle (13)
The first Campbell owner of Saddell to have been more than just a name on a list was Colonel Donald Campbell (1726-1784), whose tomb is in the graveyard at Saddell Abbey.  In Sir Duncan Campbell’s Records of Clan Campbell in the Military Service of the Honourable East India Company 1600-1858 we are told that as a subaltern in the Guards, Donald Campbell served in Germany under the Duke of Cumberland. The Duke admired him so much both for his great personal beauty and for his military talents that he had a portrait drawn of him!  How nice!

In 1753, aged twenty-seven, Donald Campbell went out to Madras to join what later became the Indian Army, then part of the East India Company.  At the siege of Madura in 1763 he commanded the cavalry, and received fourteen sword wounds and a musket ball in the body.  He continued fighting gallantly, but eventually his men withdrew and he was left on the ground and stripped of his clothes by the enemy.  Yusuf Khan, leader of the enemy troops, saw him lying there and is said to have burst into tears, saying he wished it had been anyone rather than Donald; taking him to the fort, he had his wounds dressed and sent him out again to his friends. 

In 1764 he was “esteemed an exceedingly good officer” by the Court of Madras and was given a Colonel’s commission in the 1st Regiment of Foot. In the same year he was specially chosen by the Nawab of Arcot from among a number of British officers, to be commandant of Madras. In 1768 he played a major part in several military operations, taking three enemy Indian forts. 

But his wounds continued to trouble him and in 1771 he returned to Scotland. In 1772 he asked permission of the Government to take a reward from the Nawab of Arcot; this was granted and his widow continued to receive an annuity until her death in 1803.  In 1774 he built Saddell House and it seems very likely that it was the Nawab’s reward that paid for it.  His return from India as a rich man would also explain his being in a position to build the house before inheriting the estate, which became his only in 1781.
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