Leys Castle

Leys Castle is a stately home on the southern edge of Inverness in the Highland council area. It stands a few hundred metres beyond the town’s built-up edge, where the estate’s boundary begins. The house is two storeys high and built in a mix of Tudor-Gothic and neo-Romanesque styles. A single-storey square tower rises from the centre, and the south-east front has octagonal turrets with battlements. Behind these battlements the slate roofs slope down over the main block. The castle was built in 1833 to designs by Samuel Beazley, the British architect best known for London theatres. It was commissioned by John Baillie, a former East India Company officer who later taught Arabic and Persian law at Fort William College and sat in Parliament for Inverness Burghs. Baillie laid out the surrounding gardens and parks in the 1820s and early 1830s, planting yews and ashes that still stand today. After his death the estate passed to his daughter and then to his grandson, who sold it in the early 20th century. The grounds include a separately listed Category-B farm steading built around 1860, its cross-shaped plan marked by harl-pointed walls and Tudor arches. A smaller Category-C lodge stands a short way to the south-west, its asymmetrical plan and symmetrical front door framed by similar Tudorbow windows. The slate roofs of both buildings tilt in varied polygons, echoing the main house’s roofline.