Scottish Castles Association

Aiket Castle

Aiket, which stands above the Water of Glazert, two miles from Dunlop, is a late 15th century tower with a late 16th century addition. In the 18th century the tower, once four storeys in height, was reduced to make it fashionable and to make it more rain resistant. After being burned down, the castle was restored by Robert and Katrina Clow in 1979 to its pre-eighteenth-century form.

The land was owned by the first Earl of Cassillis about 1479.

The fifth of the line was involved in the murder of Hugh, Earl of Eglinton, in 1586, and was himself shot dead near his own house of Aiket soon afterwards by the murdered man's kinsmen. The line ended with the ninth laird, James, who played a leading part in the ill-fated Dairen Scheme and opposed the Union of 1707. Thereafter the Castle was owned by one of the branches of the Dunlops of Dunlop, until let as a farm labourers' dwelling, when it went on fire, twice in one day.

Source: 'The castles of Scotland' by Maurice Lindsay