The Most Beautiful Castle Ruins in the United Kingdom
7 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful castle ruins in the United Kingdom are Tintagel Castle, Dunnottar Castle and Caerlaverock Castle. The list covers 7 castle ruins. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Britain is unusually rich in ruined castles because so many were deliberately broken. After the Civil War of the 1640s, Parliament ordered royalist strongholds slighted so they could never be held again; in Scotland, castles were blown up or abandoned during the Jacobite wars; elsewhere, stone was simply carted away once great houses replaced fortresses. What remains often stands in places a modern builder would never choose: on sea cliffs, on islands in lochs, on headlands battered by the Atlantic.
Tintagel Castle in Cornwall clings to a rocky headland that medieval writers linked to the conception of King Arthur; the castle itself was built in the thirteenth century by Richard, Earl of Cornwall. Corfe Castle in Dorset was besieged twice in the Civil War and then demolished with gunpowder in 1646, leaving tilted walls on a hill in the Purbeck gap. Caerlaverock, near Dumfries, is a rare triangular castle within a water-filled moat, famous for its siege by Edward I in 1300.
Scotland and Northern Ireland supply the most dramatic settings. Dunnottar Castle covers a flat-topped rock joined to the mainland by a narrow neck near Stonehaven, and it was there that the Scottish crown jewels were hidden from Cromwell's army. Urquhart Castle looks over Loch Ness from a promontory and was blown up in 1692. Kilchurn Castle rises from the edge of Loch Awe beneath the mountains of Argyll, and Dunluce Castle balances on a basalt cliff above the sea on the Antrim coast.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tintagel Castle | Castle ruin | |
| 2 | Dunnottar Castle | Castle ruin | |
| 3 | Caerlaverock Castle | Castle ruin | |
| 4 | Urquhart Castle | Castle ruin | |
| 5 | Corfe Castle | Castle ruin | |
| 6 | Dunluce Castle | Castle ruin | |
| 7 | Kilchurn Castle | Castle ruin |
01 Tintagel Castle
United Kingdom50.668° N 4.761° W
Rawac · CC BY-SA 3.0 What remains are walls of slate and rubble on the mainland courtyards and on the island plateau, the foundations of the great hall, early medieval house platforms, a medieval chapel, the Iron Gate guarding the landing place, and 'King Arthur's Footprint', a hollow in the rock at the island's highest point. The Victorians made it a place of pilgrimage for lovers of Tennyson's Idylls of the King. English Heritage, which looks after it for the Duchy of Cornwall, has added a larger-than-life statue, Gallos, a compass sculpture and a carved face of Merlin by the sea cave named after him below.
Did you know? The imported Mediterranean pottery found here may represent one or more complete shiploads, perhaps six or seven hundred amphorae.
02 Dunnottar Castle
United Kingdom · 22.9 km from Aberdeen56.946° N 2.197° W
Image by Collie581 from Pixabay Dunnottar's most famous episode came in 1651–52, when the Honours of Scotland — the crown, sceptre and sword — were hidden here from Cromwell's army. During the months-long blockade that followed they were smuggled out, reputedly by Christian Fletcher, the wife of a local minister, and buried beneath the floor of Kinneff church until the Restoration. In 1685 some 167 Covenanters were crammed into a cellar now called the Whigs' Vault. After the 10th Earl joined the Jacobite rising of 1715 the estate was forfeited and much of the castle stripped. Repairs began after 1919 under the Cowdray family, which still owns and runs the site, and the headland is a scheduled monument.
Did you know? One later account claims the regalia were lowered down the cliff to the beach and carried away in a creel of seaweed by a servant.
03 Caerlaverock Castle
United Kingdom · 10.3 km from Dumfries54.976° N 3.524° W
DeFacto · CC BY-SA 4.0 The most surprising part lies inside the walls. In the 1630s Robert Maxwell, newly created Earl of Nithsdale, built the Nithsdale Lodging, a residential range regarded as one of the most ambitious early classical houses in Scotland. Its life was short: in 1640 a Covenanter army besieged the Catholic earl for thirteen weeks, then pulled down the south wall and tower, and the castle was never lived in again. It is now in the care of Historic Environment Scotland and stands at the edge of the Caerlaverock National Nature Reserve.
Did you know? Only the gatehouse stands on natural rock; the rest of the castle rests on a clay platform made for it, and the moat probably supplied the building stone.
04 Urquhart Castle
United Kingdom · 20.3 km from Inverness57.324° N 4.442° W
Image by Maikiua from Pixabay Historic Environment Scotland looks after the castle, and a visitor centre was added in the 1990s. In 2025 it welcomed more than 466,000 visitors, and its image of a broken tower on Loch Ness has become one of the defining pictures of the Highlands.
Did you know? In 1689–1690 a garrison of 200 Grant soldiers held the castle against some 500 Jacobites until the Jacobite defeat at Cromdale.
05 Corfe Castle
United Kingdom · 15 km from Bournemouth50.640° N 2.059° W
Image by brendan347 from Pixabay Its end came in the Civil War. The castle belonged to Sir John Bankes, and in 1643 his wife, Lady Mary Bankes, held it for the King against a Parliamentarian siege that failed. A second siege ended in February 1646, when one of the defenders, Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Pitman, let enemy soldiers in through a sally gate. Parliament then ordered the castle slighted, and sappers used explosives to split its towers and walls — which is why whole sections now lean or lie where they fell. The Bankes family kept the estate for centuries; Ralph Bankes left it to the National Trust in 1982, and after a long conservation programme the keep was opened to visitors again in 2024.
Did you know? In 1244 Henry III ordered Corfe's keep to be whitewashed, just as he had done with the keep of the Tower of London, which became the White Tower.
06 Dunluce Castle
United Kingdom55.211° N 6.579° W
Image by hhach from Pixabay Local tradition tells that one stormy night in 1639 the kitchen collapsed into the sea during a banquet, taking the servants with it; the story is repeated everywhere, but the kitchens can still be identified among the ruins, so it is best taken as legend. The castle was abandoned after the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Excavations from 2011 on the land beside it uncovered the remains of a planned town laid out around 1608, with streets on a grid and houses that were advanced for their time, some with indoor toilets; most of it is still unexcavated. The castle is cared for by Northern Ireland's Department for Communities, and it served as Pyke, seat of House Greyjoy, in Game of Thrones.
Did you know? The oldest surviving parts are two large drum towers on the east side, each about 9 metres across, built by the McQuillans.
07 Kilchurn Castle
United Kingdom56.404° N 5.027° W
Steve Partridge · CC BY-SA 2.0 When Kilchurn was built it stood on a small island reached by a causeway. In 1817 the level of Loch Awe was lowered, and the island became the long, often waterlogged peninsula visitors cross today. The ruin is in the care of Historic Environment Scotland. Inside the walls you can still trace the tower house, the lower hall, the courtyard and the barracks ranges, and the approach along the lochside path gives the classic view of the ruin across the water.
Did you know? Sir Duncan Campbell, who added the castle's single-storey dining hall, was among the Scottish nobles killed at the Battle of Flodden in 1513.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful castle ruins in the United Kingdom?
- On our list, Tintagel Castle ranks first, followed by Dunnottar Castle and Caerlaverock Castle.
- Who destroyed Corfe Castle?
- Corfe Castle was taken by Parliamentarian forces in 1646 after a long siege, and Parliament then ordered it slighted. Its walls and towers were undermined and blown apart with gunpowder, which is why they lean at such angles today.
- Is Tintagel really King Arthur's castle?
- The link comes from Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12th-century history, which named Tintagel as the place where Arthur was conceived. The visible castle was built about a century later, but excavations show the headland was an important high-status settlement in the 5th to 7th centuries.
- What was hidden at Dunnottar Castle?
- In 1651–52 the Honours of Scotland, the Scottish crown, sceptre and sword of state, were kept at Dunnottar while Cromwell's army besieged it. Before the garrison surrendered, they were smuggled out and buried under the floor of a nearby church.
- How many castle ruins are on this list in the United Kingdom?
- The list covers 7 castle ruins.