What binds the Queen Mother and Chicago's first department store? A lost Scottish castle that was blown to smithereens by the Territorial Army

At the time of the 1921 census, Patrick Bowes-Lyon, Lord Glamis, was at home. Home mostly meaning alive — unlike many of his contemporaries (including one of his brothers) who had not survived the carnage unleashed by the First World War. But also physically at home in Streatlam Castle, near the town of Barnard Castle, in Co Durham.

Lord Glamis served in the 1/5th Battalion, the Black Watch, and was married to Lady Dorothy Beatrix Godolphin Osborne with whom he had four children. He might have had an inkling that his youngest sister would, in two years time, marry Prince Albert, Duke of York, Earl of Inverness, and Baron Killarney, the future George VI — because the couple met properly for the first time in 1920.

Lord Glamis was proud enough of his home that he invited Country Life up to wild and remote Teesdale to photograph and write about it in 1915. However, he did not own it. His father did. And, despite the Streatlam Estate being (sometimes tenuously) in the family for more than 700 years, the 15th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne decided to sell it in 1920.

The Earl owned and lived in a magnificent, fairytale castle — Glamis — in Angus, Scotland, and had further estates in St Paul’s in Walden Bury, Gibside Hall, also in Co Durham, and Woolmers Park near Hertford, among others. Yet another sweep of land and property in post-war times was excessive — even if his son thought otherwise.

An advert placed in the August 14, 1920, edition of Country Life extolled the virtues of the property, chiefly that the 'commodious and convenient' house featured three striking stone cupolas, six reception rooms, 21 bedrooms, excellent servants’ quarters and a 400-acre deer park. It also boasted a stud — which had sired four, mid-19th-century Derby winners, 500 acres of woodland, the colossal, 6,000-acre Cotherstone Moor, and 20 farms, along with 'small holdings, cottages, etc' where local tenant farmers and labourers toiled, loved and lived.

Streatlam Castle was a Baroque-style mansion with a hidden medieval core rebuilt for the Bowes-Lyon family in the early 18th century. The building, described by H. Avary Tipping in Country Life, 1915, as 'delightful and historic', was best known for its wonderful oak-panelled dining room with painted armorial ceiling (which Lord Glamis's mother later had removed to the nearby Bowes Museum for posterity) and a 46-person chapel. The entire structure was characterised by thick walls (about a metre) which included, at various times, small corner towers with parapets, and an elegant and symmetrical design.

Unfortunately the estate failed to sell — likely because, at the time, hundreds of other landowners were also trying to dispose of their estates — and so in late 1921, the Earl changed estate agents and instructed John D Wood and Co. to dispose of the property as quickly as possible.

They succeeded.

The buyer was Norman Field who was part of the Massachusetts family behind Marshall Field & Company, Chicago's first-ever department store. However, Field was not even remotely interested in the castle. He'd recently purchased nearby Lartington Hall and only wanted to get his hands of the once vastly-profitable stud. He took it and put Streatlam, the smallholdings and the rest of the estate back on the market.

By 1927, Field had sold what he could, but was still in possession of the surplus-to-his-and-seemingly-everyone-else's-requirements castle — so a decision was made to sell the contents and bring down the 18th-century parts of the building, leaving just the 14th-century heart behind.

During the Second World War, the Army occupied what was left which did little to improve its condition. It then lay derelict until 1959 — when the Territorial Army took it upon themselves to blow it to pieces as part of a training exercise.

The Country Life Image Archive contains more than 150,000 images documenting British culture and heritage, from 1897 to the present day. An additional 50,000 assets from the historic archive are scheduled to be added this year — with completion expected in Summer 2025. To search and purchase images directly from the Image Archive, please register here.