A place of beauty

I suppose I should let you see the castle where I conducted the wedding earlier this week. Since the local press photographer was there I guess the wedding was not a secret. The present castle (known as Lee Castle, by the way) is not all that old by Scottish standards. It was built in Victorian times, no doubt as some kind of hunting lodge/stately home, though the chapel is apparently much older.
I was told the rather gruesome story that the chapel was for a long time used as an abattoir until the time of the previous Baron of Lee who arranged for it to be reconsecrated by an Episcopalian minister as a place of worship. I was also told that there is at least one regularly haunted bedroom. Well, it wouldn't be much of a castle otherwise, would it?
It is set in a beautiful valley. There was talk about 20 years ago when we first moved into the area that an exclusive golf course was going to be created with the castle as the clubhouse. That particular plan was thwarted, probably by the local planners, but it would have been a spectacular setting for a golf course and it would almost certainly have rivaled, and even outshone, Loch Lomond.
Actually the valley in which it is situated was once part of the original course of the River Clyde. Just when, or why,the river changed its course I do not know, but it left behind a valley of exceptional beauty. I'm sure it took millions of years for that valley to be formed and it has also been further shaped by human beings over the centuries. Unlike some places, the natural beauty has been enhanced rather than destroyed by this human interaction with the countryside, and like the very best of Buddhist temples, Lee Castle sits in harmony with its surroundings.
In many areas of life it is hard to get that balance right between shaping the world around us and living in harmony with it. But when you get it right, it makes your heart sing.
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