Bidding the dream

As I drove up to Dunrobin Castle in summer 2020, it was the sheer scale of the place that amazed me. In the form of a French château, it’s perched right on the Sutherland coast and you can see waves crashing down below,’ remembers Charlie Thomas, director of house sales at Bonhams, and the man responsible for mounting the castle’s attic sale last April. With a history reaching back into the early 1300s and a present-day incarnation that offers 189 rooms, the family seat of the 25th Earl of Sutherland is no ordinary castle, but a 19th-century pleasure palace fashioned to entertain the great, the good and even Queen Victoria during the ‘Scottish season’ (July to early autumn) of yesteryear.

Being shown up into the attics for the first time left a lasting impression on Charlie. ‘The attics were vast; taking up the top floor of the house, they were old servants’ bedrooms that had been turned into store rooms. There was no electricity and everything was incredibly dusty; there are rumoured to be ghosts. It was the stuff