Glenapp Castle
Hotel · South Ayrshire
Glenapp Castle, Ballantrae, Girvan KA26 0NZ, United Kingdom
Highlights
Castle hotel with fine dining, falconry, and sea views
Castle hotel with fine dining, falconry, and sea views
"A stunning castle hotel in Ballantrae offering a luxurious stay with traditional Scottish interiors." - The MICHELIN Guide
"A storybook sandstone baronial pile (built in 1870) that offers opulent country‑house hospitality: lavish suites with canopy and claw‑foot tubs, afternoon tea, a formal Italian garden designed by Gertrude Jekyll, and a 110‑acre wooded estate with walking trails. Inside are playful and theatrical touches — a kilted staffer serenading a haggis while reciting Robert Burns’s “Ode to a Haggis,” heritage vegetables from on‑site gardens, a Victorian greenhouse with a secret carp pond, and secret doors leading to spiral staircases and multiple chandeliers (prompting the child in our party to observe matter‑of‑factly, “A princess bed has its own chandelier”). The property is steeped in layered history and lore: a proto‑feminist aristocratic daughter who invited pregnant women to deliver at the house, silent‑film actress Poppy Wyndham (who attempted a transatlantic flight in 1928), an American veteran who ran a radio station from the ground floor during the Troubles, and a wartime visit from Winston Churchill who held a D‑Day planning session within its walls. The on‑property Hebridean Sea Safari package combines two nights here with a multi‑day guided boat tour and glampsite sleepovers, pairing surreal luxury with rugged island exploration." - 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
"Seascapes surround this Scottish castle, a Victorian-era mansion with Gothic and Renaissance design elements, offering 17 rooms." - Kelsey Fowler Kelsey Fowler Kelsey Fowler is a New York City-based journalist who specializes in covering travel, business, and news. She is a frequent contributor to Travel + Leisure and currently works at The New York Times as a coordina
