The King’s Old Building is over 500 years old. The ‘old king’ was James IV, Mary Queen of Scots’ grandfather, and the building, originally known as ‘the king’s house’, was his private residence in the castle.

Not that James IV was old when he built it in the 1490s. In fact, he was still a bachelor, for he had yet to meet, and fall in love with, Princess Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII of England.

James’s bachelor status probably explains why the building contained just one apartment. This lay on the first floor‚ and was reached by a spiral stair in the elegant entrance turret. The stair led into the king’s hall, and beyond that to his private chambers. At courtyard level were cellars, but these were no ordinary storerooms: one was the ‘vessel house’, where James stored his precious gold and silver plate.

Within 50 years, the ‘king’s house’ had been eclipsed by the wonderful palace built beside it by his son, James V. The King’s Old Building thereafter became used for all sorts of purposes, none of them regal. A fire in 1855 destroyed the north end, and when Robert Billings, the distinguished architect, rebuilt it, he included a panelled chamber‚ called the Douglas Room, said to have been where James II killed the 8th Earl of Douglas in 1452.

Today, the King’s Old Building serves as the regimental home and museum of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.