Penkill Castle

How to Tour Penkill Castle in No Easy Steps

 

“It was a dark and stormy night.” All the best stories open with that, according to Snoopy. And so, it does here about how this image of Penkill Castle came about. Although it wasn’t night. So, fully a third of the mystique is blown before this story got off the ground… or is it?

 

Joyce had set out a full itinerary on our first trip together to Scotland in 2014. Being a photographer, she made sure my camera found its way to many of the subjects she had in mind… and, yes, I came along with it. Penkill Castle, of significance to her Boyd ancestry, was on the list. Penkill, however, is now a secluded private residence, not open to the public, so that part of the itinerary was filed under ‘wishful thinking,’ well behind ‘hopeful’. Undaunted, my ever-resourceful wife poured over the internet yet again on our last night in Scotland… and found something: a phone number. In that moment, ‘wishful thinking’ was retasked to ‘this might just happen.’

 

The next morning after breakfast – and lugging some 150 pounds of belongings down six long flights to the car – I reeled my arms back into their sockets and we set out to the airport for a short jaunt to Belfast, Northern Ireland… and we had just enough time for a side-trip to Penkill along the way. We had a couple of issues to work through on the outset, though, the first being typical Scottish summer weather of the ‘liquid sunshine’ variety, and lots of it to obscure our mission to find the castle in the allotted time. The second issue was what I referred to as ‘the British Chick’. Arriving in Glasgow Airport on the first leg of our journey through Scotland, the salesperson at the car rental desk saw Joyce coming a mile away, ‘A Mercedes upgrade is on sale for just £10 more a day!’ Joyce, knowing my skill behind the wheel, weighed out anemic Vauxhall versus sporty Mercedes… Hmmm? Happy with his sale as he handed me the keys, I told him the roads in Scotland just got a lot more interesting. And they did, although not merely because of my driving on the other side of the divide.

 

We had set our phones up with an international plan while out of country, yet the map functions were useless there at that time. No worries, as they say in the UK, the Mercedes had a built-in GPS system. Having never driven on the wrong – er, apologies – other side of the road, driving for the first time in Scotland was to me more like being in an amusement park, and that little rocket of a Mercedes made it that much more fun. My brain somehow clicked into the unfamiliar, and it was on! All was good… except for the GPS system. As there were no instructions, it took a little fiddling to get beyond the voice-prompt it was set for. Turning it on for the first time, a somewhat arrogant woman’s voice chimed in with a proper Queen’s English British accent, “Destination, please.” I responded, “Sterling.” British Chick: “That word is disambiguous.” What? How many ways can you say Sterling? So, I tried again, even using my best impression of 007 (yes, Sean Connery, keep reading, already). That’s somewhat of a stretch for someone from the American south, ‘Shaken, not stirred, y’all.’ It was all to no avail. We hadn’t been in Scotland 45 minutes and already had problems with the Brits!

 

Eventually, we figured out how to dial in destinations and British Chick became a bit more compliant, although still arrogant. British Chick considered the exact address of Penkill also to be disambiguous, yet we wound up within the ballpark. We crisscrossed the area in search mode... eyeballs, stick with me people! While coming down a steep, twisty road, Joyce spotted the castle turret from above the surrounding woods. From there, we triangulated a way to the castle entrance. Finding it, I pulled to one side of the entrance and parked. Great, we made it! Now what?

 

With her phone in hand and the number she had stumbled upon dialed in, Joyce looked at me apprehensively about pushing send. I was prepared with sound counsel and philosophy to help her through it, “Just get on with it or you will regret it the rest of your life!” Before I could get a word out, she hushed me, “It’s ringing.” Patrick Dromgoole, the owner of Penkill Castle, answered immediately. As an orthopedic nurse case manager, Joyce is well-versed in speaking to strangers on the phone. She was no different here as she stated her case eloquently to possibly take some photos of his home. To our surprise, Mr. Dromgoole was not only amenable to Joyce’s request, but he was also downright gracious. “Sure! How soon can you be here?” “Sir, we’re off the road at your driveway.” “Give me 20-minutes.” I eased the car up the driveway and parked in an obvious spot to wait.

 

What stood out to me on the drive up was that, unlike other castles we had visited, this edifice offered very little in terms of a photographic vantage point. It was surrounded by a vertical landscape of woods. To make matters worse, the cloud coverage darkened the area and Scotland’s liquid sunshine went supernova just as I parked. Rain or shine, time was not our friend, and the show must go on, as they say. While writing this, Joyce and I watched the latest episode of Amazon’s Grand Tour titled Lochdown, as the presenters drive through Scotland... in big old American cars. If you've never driven the narrow and often unimproved roads of Scotland, you have no idea how crazy - or impressive - that is. One of the show’s regulars, James May, noted that Scotland was no doubt created in God’s perfect beauty. Yet, since perfection is to remain just beyond our grasp in this life, God handed down Scottish weather as something so much less than perfect to keep us humble. It rained through nearly the entire episode. Having driven some of the same roads that James did in that episode - and in the same conditions – I knew that he had touched on the same thoughts I had at the time. Weather is described as a chaotic diverse system, because it is ever changing and truly unpredictable… more so, it seems in Scotland. Grabbing my tripod, camera, cable release, and a Kroger grocery sack that I keep for a camera raincoat, I humbly stepped into the chaotic diversity. Joyce stepped out, too, as I sorted out my gear. I told her there was no sense in both of us getting soaked, so she might as well wait in the car. Moving to the spot that appealed to me on the drive up the lane, I left her there.

 

Unless it’s a scene that’s changing rapidly, I usually spend a little time to familiarize myself with the subject, rain or not, to eke out just the right composition. Camera composition is much like an English composition. Shakespeare stated, “Brevity is the soul of wit.” With that in mind, an English composition should tell a story decently, without including every word in the dictionary or running rabbits of obscure ideas. Camera composition works the same way, to tell a story simply. Do you know the first thing on my mind about topics like this? Junk yards. Seriously. Have you ever been to one? Oh, yeah, stacks of wrecked cars and trucks… seemingly useless. Yet, they are no less than congealed life, a bit of history, each having once been of value to someone. For those with the skills or resources, many are still of value. Is a castle any different? Peering through the lens to sort out a composition, I realized my American experience has little to compare to it apart from places like St. Augustine. Aside from structures like perhaps Indian mounds or buildings that the Conquistadors erected that are still in existence, the United States has little that reaches as far into the history of manmade impact as is evident throughout Scotland. This castle began with only the turret, built by the Boyds of Penkill on this peninsular ravine-edged site in the late 16th Century. You might be wondering why just a turret?

 

A couple of years later, we visited Glendalough. Meaning “Valley of two lakes”, Gleann Dá Loch in County Wicklow, Ireland, was a monastic settlement established in the 6th century by Saint Kevin. A round turret nearly 99 feet high with a conical stone roof was built on the settlement. It was mainly used for storage, though the doorway, nearly 12 feet off the ground, suggests that the turret was also a place of refuge in the age of Viking raiders. At such times, the settlers would gather into the turret and pull the ladder in behind them. The raiders would bluster, huff, and puff around the base of the turret, with the monks likely countering, ‘Not by the hair on your chinny, chin, chin!’ Being Vikings, that hair was probably substantial. The point here is that the turret was a significant defensive structure that would not be easily breached… and so was the turret at Penkill.

 

Viking reign was no longer a threat by the 16th Century. It was a time of Reformation in Scotland, led by John Knox, founder of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. I am Presbyterian, given to Christian principle. Yet, in my understanding, another principle applies here. The Universe is a closed system, and we are all citizens of it, given to its laws and principles… and we have no say in the matter. The First Law of Thermodynamics essentially states that energy is neither created nor destroyed. It just becomes another type of energy, albeit not always a useful, productive energy. A case can be made that Vikings were merely survivalists, but the energy they applied in doing so earned them a legacy as bad actors. True to its nature, that energy has remained unchanged throughout history, and that history is replete with ‘bad actors’ who readily used it to murder and pillage their way to a ‘better’ life, while subjugating the lives of others. In a brief though accurate description of that era of Scotland, the church expressed selflessness, love, peace, and civility to a society deep in the throes of feudalism driven by squabbling kings and queens, political unrest, tribalism, and the occasional bout of murderous inhumanity… and the feudal system was taking the day. Trust to any degree was at best tenuous, even among neighbors… the Boyds were right to start their project with a turret.

 

More structure was added in the 17th Century, increasing its footprint. By the 19th Century, however, it had fallen into disrepair, ‘ruinous’ being the description at the time. Then Laird (Lord) Spenser Boyd, having both skills and resources, rebuilt it in 1857, creating even more structure. By the 1960’s, it had passed from family hands to private ownership, and is still privately owned today, though it is also considered an important Scottish historical site. This is as much as I understood of the place while peering at it through the lens at that moment. Knowing what little I did left me with questions. I had no idea how soon answers would come. Satisfied with what this location offered for composition, especially given the conditions, I walked back to where I had started in search of another and to check on Joyce… but she was not where I had left her!

 

To be continued…

 

Written by Michael Kight

 

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