Today, The Pineapple in Stirlingshire is affectionately considered one of Scotland’s most bizarre buildings. It was built in 1761 by John Murray, 4th earl of Dunmore, whose great-great-granddaughter, Lady Evelyn Cobbold (née Murray) was the first known British-born woman to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. She died 60 years ago, on 25 January 1963. Although she felt more at home in Muslim countries than in Britain, Lady Evelyn’s roots were firmly Scottish, inextricably bound up with the country’s history. She is buried on a hillside at Glencarron, for she never lost her love of the highlands; it was one of the rare things she had in common with her English husband, John Dupuis Cobbold, head of the Suffolk brewing dynasty.
Lady Evelyn’s father was Charles Adolphus Murray, 7th earl of Dunmore. The title was created in 1686 by James VII for an earlier Charles Murray, younger brother of the first Murray to be created duke of Atholl; the family seat is the fairytale-like Blair Castle in Perthshire. Evelyn’s mother was Lady Gertrude Coke, the daughter of Thomas Coke, 2nd earl of Leicester, whose descendants still occupy Holkham Hall in Norfolk.
When Evelyn, the eldest of six children, was born in 1867, the construction of her father’s castle, Amhuinnsuidhe (pronounced Aven-suey) on the Isle of Harris was nearly complete; Harris had been bought by Charles’s grandfather in the early 19th century. On the untimely death of his father Alexander, 6th earl of Dunmore, in 1845, Charles had succeeded to the title aged four. His widowed mother was
