Ardlamont House

Argyll & Dunbartonshire: About 4.5 miles south of Tighnabruaich, on minor roads 3 miles south of B8000, on Cowal, on Ardlamont Point, at Ardlamont House.

Private   NR 981659   OS: 62   PA21 2AH

OPEN: Holiday cottages may be available on the estate.

Site of castle, part of which may be incorporated into Ardlamont House, perhaps work from the 17th century or earlier. The present house, standing in 640 acres of lands, mostly dates from the first quarter of the 19th century, and is a striking symmetrical classical mansion of two storeys with harled walls and a pillared porch, and flanked  symmetrical wings also of two storeys. The walls are halred and grey-washed.
  ’Ardlamont’ is marked on Blaeu’s map of Bute, and is in Langland (1801).
  This was a property of the Lamonts, the name deriving from the Norse word for ‘lawman’, and occurs as a first name in the 13th century, and then as a surname in the 15th. John Lamont of Ardlamont is on record in 1472. The family were powerful in Cowal until massacred by the Campbells in 1646, their castles of Toward and Asgog both being besieged and then sacked, with much slaughter, and then abandoned. Ardlamont then became their chief seat. Archibald Lamont, lord of Lamont, is on record in 1701.
  The property was sold in 1893 following the ‘Ardlamont Murder’, when Cecil Hamborough was shot in the head, possibly by his tutor or perhaps the incident was a tragic accident.
  The Lamonts had a burial vault at Kilfinan Parish Church [NR 934789], dating from 1633, although the church itself is much older. There are some carved burial slabs.