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Daily Record
Daily Record
National
Paul Behan

Stunning Scottish castle is named the UK's top 'hidden gem' of historic houses

An Ayrshire castle has been crowned the UK’s top ‘hidden gem’ of historic houses in the UK.

Blairquhan Castle, Maybole, was the number one venue for a UK hidden gem country pile, according to MoverDB.com.

They analysed thousands of publicly available traveller reviews on Tripadvisor to identify the most popular historic sites across the UK, as well as the top hidden gems.

And Blairquhan was handed a very healthy 97.4 per cent positive visitor reviews to take top spot.

The castle beat Clayton Hall Museum, Manchester, into second place, while London’s Emery Walker Arts & Crafts House was edged into third.

A spokesperson said: “Blairquhan Castle leads our ranking of the UK’s top 10 historic house ‘hidden gems.’

“Built in 1824 on the side of centuries-old ruins, the countryside castle counts only 39 reviews on TripAdvisor, most of which (97.4%) are rated five stars.”

In terms of fairy-tale wedding venues Blairquhan Castle is regarded as one of Scotland’s jewels.

Situated in the beautiful Ayrshire countryside with 200 acres of private parkland and gardens, this piece of Regency architecture is far more than just a wedding venue - it has history, it has character, but most of all, it has charm.

All set up for a fairy-tale Wedding ceremony (Ayrshire post)

It also has some TV history too.

The popular Dr Finlay TV series made a comeback in the early 1990s and some of STV’s filming was done at Blairquhan Castle.

Pictured here at Blairquhan Castle are Ian Bannen, who played Dr Cameron and David Rintoul who played Dr Finlay. The original BBC series of the 1960s had Ayrshire’s Bill Simpson as Dr Finlay (Submitted photo)

The most visited historic house in Europe is Anne Frank’s House, in Amsterdam, while the most visited one in the UK is Edinburgh Castle, with Buckingham Palace in second spot.

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