Private Island in Scotland With Castle Ruins and a Titanic Backstory Listed for £5.5 Million

A little over a year after coming to market, one of Scotland’s most unusual private island estates is still looking for its next custodian.

Shuna Island sits in the Inner Hebrides off Scotland’s west coast, about 20 miles south of the coastal town of Oban and a quick 10-minute boat ride from Craobh Haven Marina.

For £5.5 million, the sale includes approximately 1,110 acres of coastline, woodland, pasture, beaches and sheltered bays, along with eight residential houses, a working farm and the atmospheric ruins of an Edwardian castle.

What’s for sale isn’t just land. Shuna carries nearly 9,000 years of human history, from Stone Age burial sites and Iron Age ritual swords to clan politics, Antarctic exploration, a postwar family escape and one enduring story involving the RMS Titanic.

Shuna Island spans more than 1,100 acres in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides, with around 220 sheep, seven holiday cottages, and a farmhouse. Image credit Knight Frank.

At the island’s northern end stands the weather-beaten silhouette of Shuna Castle, built beginning in 1911 for George Alexander Maclean Buckley, a New Zealand-born farmer, soldier and adventurer.

Buckley had supported Ernest Shackleton’s British Antarctic Expedition aboard the Nimrod, and Shackleton later named both a mountain and an island in Antarctica after him. Coming from a family whose fortune had roots in the Australian gold rush, Buckley purchased Shuna in 1910 and saw the island as a kind of ancestral Maclean home.

He set about building an extraordinary 50-room castle, complete with turrets, broad views over the surrounding waters and one rather significant architectural flaw: a flat roof in a part of Scotland not exactly known for its dry weather.

Then comes one of Shuna’s most enduring pieces of family lore.

The architect associated with the castle was Neil Gillies of Lochgilphead. According to the story passed down through generations on the island, Gillies boarded the RMS Titanic in 1912 carrying plans for further commissions in the United States. The architect and drawings, the story goes, were lost with the ship.

In a 2025 interview with The Times, Jim Gully, whose family has owned Shuna for around 80 years, joked that the loss “prevented any more Shuna Castles springing up all over America with their flat roofs and not great longevity.”

It’s a wonderful story, although one with an unresolved wrinkle: surviving Titanic passenger records do not appear to conclusively identify Gillies among those aboard.

What is clear is that Buckley continued the project without him, and the castle was never completed quite as originally intended. Its eventual decline was less dramatic, and much slower.

Gully recalled his father, Edward, spending summers tarring the castle roof in an increasingly futile attempt to keep out the rain. Eventually the deterioration became impossible to contain. Furniture began falling through weakened floors, and by the 1980s the family had moved out.

Today, the shell remains on the hillside, equal parts ruin and invitation for restoration.

But Shuna’s history begins thousands of years earlier. Twin-chamber burial mounds point to Stone Age settlement, while three Iron Age swords discovered on the island in 1875 are believed to have formed part of a ritual or votive hoard dating to around the 8th century BC.

The island may even appear in one of Scotland’s earliest written histories. The Vita Columbae, the 7th-century account of Saint Columba’s life, describes the saint and his companions being delayed on an island called “Sainean,” believed to be Shuna, before a change in the wind allowed them to continue their journey.

Over the centuries, Shuna became part of the Gaelic kingdom of Dál Riata and later entered the complicated world of Highland clan politics. Robert the Bruce gifted Lorne to Clan Campbell in 1321, with Shuna later passing into Maclean hands.

By the 18th century, the island was anything but empty wilderness. It had become a centre of lime production, with kilns operating along its shores and a population said to have reached close to 100 people.

Another lesser-known chapter arrived in the 19th century, when Glasgow merchant and antiquarian James Yates acquired Shuna. After his death, income from the island was placed in trust for public causes in Glasgow, including the University of Glasgow and Glasgow Royal Infirmary. The trustees eventually sold Shuna in the early 20th century, paving the way for Buckley and his improbable castle.

Shuna changed character again after the Second World War. In 1946, the Dowager Viscountess Selby reportedly walked into a London estate agent’s office and asked whether they had any islands for sale.

Her family had emerged from the war looking for a new beginning. Her partner, Donald Wells, had served as an airborne pathfinder and was among the troops parachuted into France on D-Day.

The agency happened to have one, and without ever having visited Shuna, she bought it and moved the family north.

Ruins scattered across Shuna hint at nearly 9,000 years of human history, from Stone Age burial mounds and Iron Age ritual finds to the remains of former buildings and the better-known ruins of Shuna Castle. Image credit Knight Frank.

Nearly 80 years later, her grandson Jim Gully told The Times that the family has been there ever since.

Shuna became their home, working farm and private retreat. Gully and his brother were homeschooled on the island by their grandfather, Wells, and spent their childhood roaming its beaches, woodland and coves.

Four generations of the family have now grown up with Shuna, which remains a working estate. Around 220 Beulah sheep graze its pastures, while red and fallow deer roam freely across the island. Otters and seals frequent the shoreline; porpoises and dolphins move through the surrounding waters; and golden and sea eagles can be seen overhead.

Country sports have also formed part of island life for generations, including deer stalking and woodcock shooting.

Of the 1,110 acres, approximately 81 acres are permanent pasture and another 640 acres rough grazing, while more than 300 acres are native woodland and foreshore.

There are also eight residential properties spread across the island.

The Boat House and neighbouring Pier House sit near the northern arrival point overlooking Loch Shuna. Birchwood occupies a secluded stretch of the north shore, while The Forge, Garden House, Oakwood Cottage and Shuna Farmhouse are positioned further across the island.

At its southern end, South End House sits above a private bay near some of Shuna’s ancient burial sites.

Together, the houses can accommodate up to 52 guests. Seven have operated as holiday cottages, with tourism now accounting for around half of the island’s steady revenue alongside farming, according to the Gully family.

The infrastructure is surprisingly practical, too. Shuna operates largely off-grid, with photovoltaic panels, wind turbines, battery storage and backup generators supplying power. There is a private pier, slipways and a helipad, while Craobh Haven Marina is around 10 minutes away by boat.

Despite its secluded setting in the Inner Hebrides, Shuna lies just 20 miles south of Oban, the principal hub of Scotland’s west coast and often called the “Gateway to the Isles.” Image credit Knight Frank.

There are no conventional public roads or traffic. Instead, an island track runs between the northern pier and South End House, passing woodland, beaches, grazing land and the remains of an old walled garden along the way.

And while Shuna feels far removed from the rest of the world, it isn’t particularly difficult to reach. Oban lies about 20 miles to the north, while Glasgow can be reached in under three hours by a combination of boat and car, or considerably faster by helicopter.

The landscape itself changes constantly. The island rises to around 90 metres, with rocky shoreline giving way to sandy beaches, peat bogs, grazing land and native woodland. Scarba, Jura and Luing provide shelter from the worst of the Atlantic weather, while nearby lies the Corryvreckan Whirlpool, one of the world’s most powerful tidal phenomena.

For all its wilderness, Shuna has never really been untouched.

Over nearly 9,000 years it has been a prehistoric ritual landscape, clan territory, industrial island, philanthropic asset, Edwardian dream, postwar family refuge, working farm and holiday destination.

Now, after around eight decades in the same family, it is looking for its next chapter.