A grand baronial house and estate in Stirling Council Area, Blair Drummond lies a mile to the south of Doune and 4 miles (6 km) northwest of Stirling. The present three-storeyed baronial house, designed by J.C. Walker and built in 1868-72, replaced an earlier mansion created by Alexander McGill in 1715. The house was sold in 1977 to the Camphill Trust who use it to care for the handicapped. During the 18th Century Blair Drummond was the home of Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696 - 1792), an enlightened landlord who set about clearing the deep moss of the carse lands with a view to agricultural improvement. The scheme was initiated in 1766 and within a few decades the greater part of Blair Drummond and Flanders Moss had been converted to productive farmland by both Lord Kames and his improving neighbours. Lord Kames was a Law Lord and leading light of the Scottish enlightenment during the second half of the 18th century. Within the policies of the estate are a stable block (1835) with a clock-tower added in 1871, a 19th-century ice-house, an octagonal storehouse (1800), Tudor lodges and the Mill of Torr which had originally been designed to raise water from the River Teith to wash away peat moss. Today 48 ha (119 acres) of the 607 ha (1500 acres) Blair Drummond Estate are given over to Scotland's only Safari and Leisure Park established in the 1970s.
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