Glengyle Research Group

Glengyle House

Glengyle House stands at the head of Loch Katrine, on the shore where the burn from the glen meets the loch. The original block has two storeys and attic dormers; a western wing was added during the 19th century, and the house was extended again after the First World War.1

Glengyle House at the head of Loch Katrine - a white two-storey cottage standing among trees at the foot of a richly-coloured hillside, reflected in the loch in front of it.
Photo by Ian Mitchell, November 2004, Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Rob Roy MacGregor was born at Glengyle in 1671, but not in this building. The present house dates from around 1707, when it was put up by Gregor Ghlun Dubh in preparation for his marriage to Mary Hamilton of Bardowie in 1708. Writing to the Earl of Breadalbane in 1707, Rob Roy refers to his nephew "Bigging his house" and asks for a precept of four trees.2

Glengyle House from the west, showing the gable end with its chimney and the long flank of the building stretching away towards the later eastern wing, which carries an oval oeil-de-boeuf window.
Photo by The Jacobite, Flickr.

A stone above the door carries the inscription 1704 / J. M'G J.B. / G. M'G. 1726 M.H. The 1704 was cut some time after the fact, not contemporaneously; the lower pair of initials records Gregor MacGregor and Mary Hamilton, and the upper pair their eldest son John MacGregor (1708 - 1774) and his wife Jean Buchanan of Craigeavairn.2

Glengyle House seen from across the loch, the white house set among trees on the shore at the foot of the hillside and reflected in the still water in front of it.
Photo by The Jacobite, Flickr.

A room in the present house has long been pointed out as Rob Roy's birthplace. Both facts - that the present house post-dates his birth, and that local tradition still identifies a room within it - are noted in John MacGregor's 1926 Glasgow Herald article on the house.2

Glengyle House seen head-on: a harled, white-rendered three-bay house with red-painted margins, crow-stepped gables and dormer windows, and a stone-surrounded front door beneath a carved lintel.
Provided by Peter Lawrie, Glen Discovery.
The steading at Glengyle House - a long stone range with a grey slate roof set behind a post-and-rail fence, with the corner of a second rubble-built block carrying white-painted French doors in the foreground and a wooded hillside behind.
Photo by Steven Robertson, April 2026.
A small stone bothy with a grey roof standing in a field below the hillside at Glengyle, seen past the gable corner of a rubble building and a wooden field gate, with rain falling.
Photo by Steven Robertson, April 2026.

Location Map

Glengyle House

Footnotes

  1. Historic Environment Scotland, Glengyle House, MacGregor of Glengyle Burial Enclosure (Canmore site 167538); listed building LB4024. ↩︎

  2. John MacGregor, W.S., "Glengyle House," Glasgow Herald, 3 June 1926, via Glen Discovery. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎