Victorian Era To Present
From 1802 the Castle was used as a farmhouse, but the Government repurchased it in 1827, this time as a base designed specifically to tackle whisky smuggling and illegal distillation in the area. From the army's final departure in 1831, the castle went into a steady decline. Its last residents were the Ross sisters, known locally as the Castle Ladies, and they left during the First World War. By 1947, when the surrounding Delnadamph estate was bought by Sir Edmund and Lady Stockdale, the castle was an empty ruin, used only for occasional shooting lunches within the curtain walls. With financial assistance from the Stockdales, Corgarff Castle passed into State care in 1961 and has in recent years been wonderfully restored by Historic Scotland as it would have been in the years following the 1748 conversion. In 1979, the Stockdale family gave the ownership of the castle to the Lonach Highland Friendly Society.
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