Guests who wish to enjoy Ardlamont Estate's delightful setting amidst the stunningly beautiful scenery in Argyllshire's Cowal Peninsular are spoiled for choice. Their options range from staying in the centrepiece of the estate, the 16th century Ardlamont House, which is run as a family house, and is available to shooting parties, wedding parties, video and film crews, and others engaged in estate-based activities or stay in some of the smaller cottages on the Estate. Visitors can now soak up the relaxed atmosphere of this once totally private estate.

Guests can go shooting, stalking or fishing, use the Estate as a base to explore this little known part of Scotland on foot, horseback or bicycle or simply unwind with occasional visits to the neighbouring villages of Kames and Tighnabruich with their hotels, bars and seafood restaurants.

At the heart of the 640-acre estate is the beautiful and historic Ardlamont House, a classical example of a Scottish country house, dating back to at least 1646 when it became the ancestral home of the Lamonts, one of Scotland's oldest clans.

Nowadays its ringing corridors, sumptuous public rooms with their blazing log fires, and elegant four-postered bedrooms are regularly let to house parties.

These include family and friends of couples who take advantage of the chance to have a totally unique wedding within the grounds, shooting parties with their game bags full of pheasant, partridge or duck and film and video makers shooting top fashion models or music stars.

Four cottages on the Estate have been refurbished to the highest standard and are available as holiday lets.

Ardlamont Estate is steeped in history, some of it bloody, and all of it fascinating. Ardlamont House became the ancestral home of the Lamont Clan following the Toward Massacre in 1646, when 200 Lamonts were slaughtered despite having been given assurances of safe-conduct by their arch-enemies the Campbells. In 1893 Ardlamont Estate became infamous in a murder trial which gripped the nation. A wealthy young aristocrat Cecil Hambrough died while out shooting with his tutor, Alfred George Monson, who it later emerged had persuaded Hambrough to take out life insurance policies for £2,000 in favour of Monson's wife just days before his death. One of the witnesses at the trial was Dr Joseph Bell, the eminent Edinburgh surgeon and forensic scientist who became the prototype for Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. Despite Bell's evidence Monson was acquitted on a 'Not Proven' verdict and later went onto to sue Madam Tussauds for erecting an effigy of him at the entrance to their Chamber of Horrors.

During the war the estate was used to train 3,000 troops for their part in the Normandy Landings on D-Day, an ironic fact given that one of the Little Ships involved in the Dunkirk evacuations four years earlier is now part of the Ardlamont experience.

Nowadays Ardlamont is the epitome of elegant living, peace and tranquillity.