Designed in 1896 and remaining unfinished until 100 years later, the Marble Chapel is one of four chapels within the grounds of Mount Stuart. The 3rd Marquess converted to Catholicism at the age of 21 and mass was said in the Marble Chapel each Sunday the family were in residence. The practice continued until the 1960s and today, a variety of services are still held in the chapel including weddings and an annual carol service. Look out for the spectacular cosmati style floor and saints painted in the lantern drum.

Marble Chapel

The Horoscope Room was originally designed as an observatory for the 3rd Marquess. During the First World War it was transformed into an operating theatre and latterly in the time of the 6th Marquess, it was used as a bedroom. Nowadays, the room can be hired for weddings and special events, and guests can enjoy sleeping under the planets.

Horoscope Room

The Family Bedroom is the bedroom of the 3rd Marquess and Marchioness of Bute. The centrepiece of the room is the magnificent Russian Icon, a 25th wedding anniversary gift from the 3rd Marquess to his wife. The ceiling depicts Bute family marriages - look for the knots in the rope between each shield which symbolise  'tying the knot' as we say in Scotland.

Family Bedroom

Join our guide James, for a tour of the Dining Room. A passionate art historian, James will guide you through generations of Bute family history using the portraits adorning the walls. Look out for portraits by celebrated artists Ramsay, Reynolds and Raeburn.

Dining Room

Fitted out in the late 1880s under the direction of William Frame, former assistant to the great Gothic architect William Burges, this was originally Lady Bute’s sitting room. A predominant theme is the depiction of birds and foliage in the carved frieze and in the finely carved marble pillar capitals by Thomas Nicholls. The paintings in this room are from the Dutch and Flemish 'Golden Age' and include a large wooded landscape scene by Berchem.

The Lady Bute Bedroom

The Gallery level includes en-suite bedrooms and the Family Wing where the 3rd Marquess and Marchioness had their bedroom and individual sitting rooms. Paintings on the Gallery are by Italian, Dutch and English artists.

We recommend that you begin this guide when you are standing near to the top of the marble stair and walk around the Gallery in a clockwise direction.

Gallery

Drawing rooms were traditionally used for conversation, sewing, reading and drinking tea. 

In this room the objects are dated much earlier than the Victorian 19th century building. The painting collection is mainly Italian 16th and 17th century work. Many of the paintings in this room are known to have been at Luton House as part of the collection developed by the 3rd Earl and the 1st Marquess during the early 18th century.

The decoration of the Drawing Room reflects various scholarly interests of the 3rd Marquess of Bute. Themes taken from heraldry, mythology and the natural world combine into a unifying whole of rich detail and design. The interior was largely designed by Sir Robert Rowand Anderson in the early 1890s and work continued late into that decade.

Drawing Room

This room is one of three interconnected libraries in the house, each named after a different colour - Blue, Red and Purple - which were the original wall colours. There is also a fourth modern repository, which adjoins the Bute Collection Archive at Mount Stuart, known as Library 4. This fourth library was installed by Johnny, 7th Marquess of Bute, and is home to the book collections accumulated at Dumfries House that were brought to Mount Stuart in 2004.

Purple Library

Soaring to a height of eighty feet the Marble Hall - constructed from rare Italian and Sicilian marbles - forms what Gavin Stamp has called ‘the dark and mysterious heart of Mount Stuart’. The glory of the Hall is its expression of Bute’s interest in astronomy and astrology: H W Lonsdale’s richly coloured stained glass symbolise the signs of the zodiac and the huge vaulted ceiling is decorated with the constellations of the Northern Hemisphere.

Mount Stuart Trust

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