Strachur House

In 1838, after the death of Helen Campbell, widow of General John Campbell, the family of the Campbells of Strachur continued to live mostly at Ardgartan, and Strachur House was let.

The first tenant was Sir John Archibald Murray. He was born 1779 in Midlothian and went to the University of Edinburgh to study Law. he moved in progresive and liberal circles, became one of the five editors of the newly established “Edinburgh Review” and took a prominent part in the agitation which led to the passing of the Reform Bill in 1832. He became MP for Leith Burghs in 1832, and in 1835 became Lord Advocate and introduced a good many bills into the House of Commons. He left parliament in 1839 for the Court of Session, was knighted that year and adopted the name of Lord Murray.

He was a generous patron of art and letters and his hospitality was famous. With his wife, Mary Rigby, he lavishly entertained his friends not only in Edinburgh but also in Strachur. It was on invitation of Lady Murray, who had been taught by Chopin in London, that the world famous pianist came and spent a week in Strachur House in August 1848. Chopin came in the company of Jane Stirling, a society beauty, she was Chopin’s pupil and would later become something close to what we would now call his manager.

Lord Murray died in 1859 in Edinburgh, Mary died at Strachur in 1861 at the age of 93. They had one child, a son, who died at the age of 10.

Sir Fitzroy Maclean of Dunconnel, Bt. (1911-1996)
Before World War II, Sir Fitzroy Maclean served as a diplomat at the British embassy in Moscow. From there he made several
notable journeys to the Caucasus and Soviet Central Asia, often shadowed by NKVD agents, the forerunners of the KGB. During the war, Sir Fitzroy joined the Cameron Highlanders as a private and volunteered for the Special Air Service Regiment, taking
part in the regiment’s famous operations behind enemy lines in the Western Desert. In 1943, at the age of thirty-two, he was promoted brigadier and secretly dropped by parachute into German-occupied Yugoslavia as Winston Churchill’s personal envoy and Commander of the British Military Mission to Tito and the partisans. He recorded some of these experiences in ‘Eastern Approaches’, a classic memoir of true-life adventure. In 1957 Sir Fitzroy moved with his family to Argyll, buying Strachur House and estate from Miss Joan Campbell. He was a Member of Parliament (for Lancaster, then Bute and North Ayr) from 1941 to 1974, serving as Under Secretary for War in the post-war Churchill and Eden governments. Diplomat, soldier, statesman, traveller, writer — a true modern hero — Sir Fitzroy was often put forward as the model for Ian Fleming’s James Bond, a distinction he neither accepted nor denied. He wrote many other books including a biography of Bonnie Prince Charlie and a history of the clans. In1994 he was created a Knight of the Thistle.