Culzean Castle
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Culzean Castle (pronounced cull-ANE: see yogh) is a castle near Maybole on the Ayrshire coast of Scotland. It is the former home of the Marquess of Ailsa but is now owned by the National Trust for Scotland. The castle lies with the Culzean Castle Country Park and is opened to the public. The castle is also famous for appearing on the back of five pound notes issued by the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Culzean castle was the constructed as an L Plan Castle by the orders of David Kennedy, 10th Earl of Cassilis. He instructed the architect Robert Adam to rebuild a previous, but more basic, stately house into a fine castle to be the seat of his earldom. The castle was built in stages between 1777 and 1792. It incorporated a large drum tower with a circular saloon inside (which overlooks the sea), a grand oval staircase and a suite of well-appointed apartments.
Dwight Eisenhower stayed briefly at the castle during World War II. After the war ended, the Kennedy family gifted the castle and its grounds to the nation (mainly to avoid inheritance tax). In doing so, they stipulated that the apartment at the top of the castle be gifted to General Eisenhower as a thank-you for his part in winning the war. The General stayed at Culzean Castle several times including once while President of the United States. An Eisenhower exhibition takes up one of the rooms of the castle, with mementos of his lifetime.
The castle was used as the ancestral home of Lord Summerisle (played by Christopher Lee) in the 1973 film The Wicker Man.