2011 Project365 (day269)

Date: 26 September 2011 17:30:02

Today we had a trip out to Kelburn Castle. I had wanted to go here for ages since I first heard about it. The castle is the home of an aristocratic family, the Boyles who have owned it since the 12th century. As I understand it, a few years ago they learnt that they needed to rerender the front of the building, but rather than just take the pebbledash down and put up some new pebbledash, they invited some Brazilian grafitti artists to cover the old render with giant grafitti for a couple of years, with the intention that after a couple of years when they'd got enough money they would get it all off the building and rerender it as it was previously. However, I suspect due to these straitened financial times, they still haven't taken it down (it's been like this I think since 2007) and there's no indication of any date when they intend to rerender. There's now a facebook campaign to keep the grafitti, I'm not sure how successful it will be as according to the internet (so it must be true!) the current owner really doesn't like it. Personally I think it's great, and in all honesty if it hadn't been for the grafitti I doubt we would have visited so it is a money-spinner for him regardless of whether or not he likes it. The castle sits in quite extensive grounds with walks along a glen which was a very pleasant walk, plus quite a large formal garden.