Please note there is significant storm damage across the estate, and some paths and woodland areas will remain closed.
In the caves beneath the clifftop of Culzean Castle, with its splendid collections and dazzling views, there are murkier histories of smuggling and tax evasion.
For several decades in the 1700s, these caves were a smugglers’ lair, a discreet hiding place for illicitly imported wine, port, rum, brandy, tea, silks and other goods. The Kennedy family, who owned Culzean, and their staff almost certainly turned a blind eye to this activity; some were possibly involved in it.
Smuggling was big business in Ayrshire in the 17th and 18th centuries. It involved networks of merchants, ship owners, and financial syndicates that spanned Ayr, Glasgow, the Isle of Man, Ireland, continental Europe, and the Caribbean. Many of them dealt in both legitimate and contraband goods.
Sir John Kennedy, 2nd Baronet of Culzean, and his son, Sir Thomas Kennedy, the 9th Earl of Cassillis, had active business links with these networks. We know, for instance, that Sir John co-owned a boat seized by revenue officers in 1726 when running contraband from the Isle of Man to Scotland. Sir Thomas Kennedy’s farm manager, Archibald Kennedy (no relation), ran a wine spirits business from a bedroom in the castle, trading with prominent smugglers on the Isle of Man.
It’s also been suggested that the house of ‘Scipio’ Kennedy was used for meetings by merchants involved in smuggling.
Ayrshire’s smuggling boom
There were two main reasons why Ayrshire was a smuggling hotbed: geography and taxes. In order to finance various wars, the government imposed high import taxes on goods like tobacco, tea, French brandy and rum. However, on the nearby Isle of Man, which the Duke of Atholl controlled, the duty on these goods was lower than on the mainland. Shipments of goods could be landed legitimately on the Isle of Man, smuggled in smaller boats to the mainland and sold around the west of Scotland.
Some of those involved may have been motivated by politics as well as profit. Rather than pay taxes to the Hanoverian government, Jacobite supporters – including perhaps Sir Thomas Kennedy – opted for smuggled goods.
The caves at Culzean
Culzean was an ideal spot for this activity because its coves and caves were perfectly suited for landing and storing illicit cargoes before moving them onto customers around Ayr and Glasgow. A stairway probably linked the caves to the original castle kitchen above, and they were probably used as storage cellars well before the smuggling boom.
During an archaeology dig in 2018, Trust volunteers discovered smashed 18th-century wine bottles in the caves at Culzean, along with signs of earlier activity, including a medieval doorway into the Stable Cave. In the Castle Caves, with their barred windows and stone fortifications, there are the remains of living quarters, including a latrine and cupboards cut into a wall near an entrance. A guard protecting the valuable contraband from the excise men or other unwelcome visitors could have kept their lantern or pistol here.
Ghosts and fairies
Also useful for keeping away the curious were the ghost tales associated with the caves at Culzean. One tells the story of a piper and his dog who set out to find where the caves and their tunnels led to, playing his pipes to let his friends know he was safe. The pipes soon fell silent, however, and all that remained of him and his dog was the occasional skirling of the pipes on stormy nights at Piper’s Brae, a short distance inland.
Other tales said that the caves were the entrance to a fairy world, from where interlopers would never return.
The decline of the trade
The smuggling trade between Ayrshire and the Isle of Man peaked in the 1750s and 1760s. It had always been a risky business, with cargoes lost in storms or intercepted by other smugglers, and a step-up in revenue patrols in the 1750s heightened the risks. When the British government took over fiscal control of the Isle of Man in 1765 and raised duties, much of the island’s smuggling trade diverted to more distant ports like Guernsey, making Ayrshire less geographically attractive.
Even so, there was still a lingering trade in illicit whisky from Arran, where dozens of illicit stills existed in the late 18th century.
What’s left today
Fast forward to the 2020s, and the Trust’s work to care for and share Culzean means you can still visit some of the smugglers’ haunts and imagine the sights and sounds of its smuggling history. You can access the Stable Cave on the foreshore, and see the barred entrances of the Castle Caves in the cliff above you, or listen out for the sound of ghost pipes near the caves or along Piper’s Brae on a gloomy day.
Inside the Castle, landscape artist Alexander Nasmyth's Culzean paintings and sketches will help you picture the scene as the smuggling crews landed their cargoes on the shore by moonlight. And looking at Batoni’s portrait of Sir Thomas Kennedy, the 9th Earl, it’s easy to imagine him giving orders to his factor about purchasing a new boat or consignment from the Isle of Man.
And, finally, if you finish a visit to Culzean with a cup of tea in the Home Farm Kitchen, you may also like to reflect that Ayrshire’s smugglers helped to democratise tea-drinking in the west of Scotland, turning it from an upper-class luxury into a more affordable pleasure.