Saddell Castle (17)
Colonel John Macleod was probably the last of the Gaelic-speaking lairds, a scholar, and the owner of an important Celtic library.  He lived at Saddell House, but about 1890 there was a bad fire, the house was gutted and the library destroyed.  For the couple of years it took to rebuild the house, he moved back to the castle, which he had renovated - a task he evidently had fun doing, judging by the invented coats of arms and mock mottoes, containing jokes and puns, with which he decorated the dining room ceiling.  Once Saddell House was repaired the castle went back to being an estate farmhouse.  

In the 1930s it was given another new roof, but after the War there were no longer the funds to repair it and it began the decline from which the Landmark Trust began the process of rescuing it in 1975.  In 1984 the Trust bought the remainder of the estate.
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