"Dismal Downs, as desolate a piece of land as you'll find this side of the moon, lies in the cold, dark heart of the Rannoch Moor in central Scotland. And looming over its soggy peat bogs and bottomless mires is a solitary castle, a forlorn remnant of the glory days of the feudal clans, abandoned since the 18th century! ...Ptarmigan and grouse hide amid the heather of the untended clan cemetery!" This is how Don Rosa describes the McDuck estate in the unpublished sketches from Lo$ chapter 1.

Actual map.

In the next panels he turns the focus toward the owners of this estate: "...visitors to Dismal Downs are rare! No other clan was TOUGH enough to tame this brutal land since the disappearance of its ORIGINAL LAIRDS... The mighty clan MacDuich!" - "MacDuich" being the old Gaelic spelling of the clan's name. The name was changed into its present form "McDuck" shortly after William the Conqueror's invasion of Scotland in 1071.

The Castle and its history
Very little is known about the origin of the McDuck Castle as we know it. But it shows signs of being constructed over a long time. The curtain wall with its turrets, surrounding the castle is likely to be the oldest part, probably constructed around the year 1000, as it was present in 1057 when Sir Quackly McDuck was hiding his treasure and himself inside the castle. However it's likely that comprehensive constructions took place in the following century. In an article about The English Medieval Castle by David Dawson, we can read that "The Norman conquest of England in 1066 introduced feudalism to England. …castles were a feature of feudalism so it follows that the Normans introduced castles to England." The Scottish tower house inside the Castle, which actually gives the building a touch of a chateau, seems to represent an architecture which was developed a few century's later. It's thus likely that it was not erected until the late medieval.

What kind of building the McDucks were living in before the construction of the castle is not mentioned anywhere, but the fact that a McDuck was selling large amounts of stone to the Romans in 122ad indicates that the McDucks had easy access to stone. So it's not unlikely that they had their own little fortification, maybe inspired by Roman installations in Roman Britain (today's England), built out of stone. Parts of this construction could still be included in the later medieval castle.

The interior of the castle

The grand hall.

Scenes from the interior of Castle McDuck are shown in several stories by Barks and Rosa with The old Castles Secret (1948) by Barks, and The Last of The Clan McDuck (1991) by Don Rosa as the most important ones. It's typical medieval with secret passages, a lot of armour, heraldic symbols - including both banners and the clan's coat of arms, and even some hidden treasures. The best known McDuck treasure is the one hidden by Sir Quackly McDuck in 1057 and found in 1948 by $crooge. But due to the hints given in the end of The Crown of the Crusader Kings (2001) there may be another, still undiscovered, treasure hidden somewhere in the castle.

While following Barks when drawing the exterior of the castle, Don Rosa admits to have found inspiration elsewhere when he draw parts of the interior. In a comment he says: "The grand hall of McDuck castle is copied from the grand hall of Camelot as drawn by Hal Foster in an early PRINCE VALIANT page."

The clan's cemetery
Outside Castle McDuck is located the McDuck cemetery with the graves of McDucks dating back at least to the 11th century, and probably even longer. In The old Castles Secret Barks also showed that there is a secret passage between the false tombstone of Sir Swamphole McDuck and the long sealed dungeons inside the castle. And there is a hidden entrance between the sealed dungeons and the rest of the castle - ending up right behind Sir Swamphole McDuck's armour.

The observant reader will notice that there is tombstone shaped as a cross in the left bottom corner of the drawing (shown below) of the McDuck Cemetery. Is this introducing a Christian symbol? Don Rosa says: "I have managed to slip crosses into my stories, and once mentioned some nuns in a convent. But this is simply background settings and has nothing to do with the plot, and obviously I couldn't say *what* religion this was a convent for, nor would I ever want to."

The McDuck cemetery.