14. Peregrine Bertie

We talked to the grandson of the 4th Marquess of Bute for the making of this guide – his name is Peregrine Bertie. Peregrine remembers his visits here as a small child, in the early 1930s. There’s a photograph of him and his brother at the Castle on your screen, Peregrine is the younger boy in the photograph.

Peregrine and his brother slept in a nursery – now an office area – in what was reputedly the most haunted part of the Victorian Castle. Peregrine never saw the ghosts himself, but he still remembers them:

“There was one called the ‘3 Steps’ and you thought it was just the night watchman going round, but I don’t hink it was… There was another one who knocked on the door and you thought it was the footmen calling you, but it wasn’t… And my brother actually was, I think, thrown out of bed; gently, by a poltergeist.”

During the First World War, the Castle was used as a Regimental headquarters.

“Many of the sentries there used to see these apparitions I think… people said, oh they were just the peacocks, but whether they were or not I don’t know…”