Not long ago, the new chatelaine of the majestic Carbisdale castle in the Scottish Highlands discovered that some of the locals had written a rather unflattering song about her. ‘I didn’t hear all of it, but the lyrics were along the lines of ‘Samantha and her kingdom, she rules with a heart of stone’, that sort of thing,’ she recalls.
A tad mean-spirited you might think, although this little ditty is at the kinder end of the many insults which Lady Carbisdale – also known as Samantha Kane – has been on the receiving end of since she became the owner of her £5million historic, turreted, 42,000 sq ft, 24-bedroom hilltop country mansion nestled in acres of glorious countryside.
She says she’s also been labelled a ‘freak’, ‘Lady A***hole’, a ‘horrible piece of work’ and been the subject of barely veiled threats, including one suggesting people marshal their ‘pitchforks and burning torches’ in revolt.
She also revealed how she was physically assaulted by one member of the community who objected to her attending a local sports event.
Such has been the mounting strength of feeling against Samantha that this week it emerged that, just two years after acquiring the keys to her home – and after lavishing millions restoring what was a derelict ruin – she’s been left with no choice but to put it back on the market.
Samantha Kane, 65, has put Carbisdale castle on the market because locals ‘can’t accept me for who I am’
‘I really thought I would see out my days here, but I also feel that if I remain then some people may do something bad to the castle, rather than me, in order to get back at me,’ she reveals in this exclusive interview. ‘Even members of my staff have been bullied and threatened for working for me. It cannot go on.’
As a former City high-flyer who, by her own admission, ‘rarely left Kensington and Chelsea’ before she moved to Scotland, Samantha, 65, is an outsider here.
But she believes there is an altogether more personal reason for people’s antipathy: not only is she transgender, but she is the only person known to have changed sex three times, transitioning from a man to a woman, returning to live as a male, and then, in 2017, undergoing what she insists has been her final set of surgery to transform into the woman she is today.
Although the latest surgery finally brought her peace, some locals, she believes, simply cannot accept her – as countless social media posts on local forums referring to her as ‘he’ and ‘a man’ would suggest.
‘What really hurt me is people making it a personal issue and bringing in gender identity, which is something that I really forget to think about because I live my life as a woman, and I think I am a woman,’ she says. ‘But it seems some people cannot accept that, or accept me for who I am.’
Certainly, it is fair to say that residents in the villages dotted around the Kyle of Sutherland, an area of outstanding natural beauty, have never met anyone like her – if you could deploy just one phrase to summarise Samantha’s complex biography, it would be ‘eye-popping’.
Born Sam Hashimi in her native Iraq, Samantha arrived in the UK in the early Eighties as a male student, and went on to make a fortune as the investment head of a Saudi-owned firm.
In 1990, her love of football and Middle East connections coalesced when she became the face of an attempted Saudi takeover bid of Sheffield United. She married and had two children – they are now estranged – before, in 1997, she underwent gender reassignment surgery at a private clinic to become Samantha, including operations on her genitals, breast augmentation and tooth veneers.
She had, she announced at the time, become the person she was meant to be. By 2004, however, the dream had soured. The pressure of alienation from family, combined with disappointment at the hurdles women faced in society, drove her to spend £25,000 to reverse the surgery and live again as a man called Charles.
It would be another 13 years before Samantha underwent surgery abroad – again paid for privately – to transform once more into a female. And there is no going back now.
‘I hated being a woman really, in the beginning, so I tried to force myself, let’s say, to be a man. Then I just couldn’t. I was born in a different way,’ she says.
‘Now, physically and mentally, I consider myself to be a woman – and no less of a woman than any other.’
The majestic Carbisdale castle in the Scottish Highlands. The £5million historic, turreted, 42,000 sq ft, 24-bedroom hilltop country mansion is nestled in acres of glorious countryside
They are defiant words, but there is no doubt that events of the past two years have taken their toll. I notice that she has allowed her once artfully dyed blonde hair to go grey and she confides that she has suffered from anxiety and heart palpitations. ‘Sometimes I struggle to sleep,’ she says.
She seems noticeably fragile, too, as we chat in one of the magnificently restored state rooms.
Of course, she always knew she faced a challenge when, in early 2022, she bought the estate ‘on a whim’ having seen it advertised in a magazine. Then working as a barrister in London, she was immediately captivated despite the atrocious state of the place: it had been flooded, water was pouring through leaks in the ceiling, and it was close to rack and ruin. ‘It still seemed like a magical place,’ she recalls. ‘It’s funny, I felt something like a spiritual connection with it, almost like a duty to do something.’
She spoke at the time of her ambition to create her own ‘fairytale’ and made a cash offer for the then £1.2million property the same day she viewed it.
It perhaps helped that the woman for whom the castle was built – Mary, the widowed Duchess of Sutherland – herself had a colourful history. The mistress of the third Duke of Sutherland, she had scandalised society in 1892 by marrying him just four months after the death of his wife. She then became entangled in a bitter court battle with his sons and heirs three years later when he died and left his magnificent estate to her.
After negotiating a huge settlement, she built Carbisdale castle on a hilltop plateau overlooking the estate of her late husband, leading it to be named the ‘Castle of Spite’ by locals. ‘I thought this was quite a story really and I knew I could create another chapter,’ Samantha says.
It was no small undertaking: when she arrived in the autumn of 2022 – complete with rescue cat Penny, now renamed Lady Penelope in honour of her more majestic domestic situation – there were not even basic amenities.
Samantha duly employed dozens of people to overhaul the castle, bar one wing. Staterooms, bedrooms, ensuite bathrooms have all been transformed into a vision of Scottish baronial style, underpinned by modern comforts.
There are plush tartan carpets, and wallpaper featuring gold stag heads on a red background. The original fireplaces, many surrounded with Italian marble, have all been meticulously restored.
Samantha recalls the locals as largely welcoming at first. ‘I think they thought it was great someone had purchased the castle and was going to do it up,’ she says.
There was some grumbling at how new fencing and gates meant dog walkers could no longer access the grounds. ‘There are 13,000 acres, but people who used to roam here when it was derelict didn’t like the fact we needed a slight area of privacy and security.’
Although she uses the plural ‘we’, in reference to herself, the cat Lady Penelope and an occasional assistant, Samantha does, in fact, live largely on this vast estate alone.
Then, as people learned more of Samantha’s personal history, gossip started to circulate.
Samantha in 1998 after undergoing surgery and transitioning to a woman for the first time
‘The nature of a small village is if you have a dispute with one person, then others start putting some gossip around and lots more people get involved,’ she says. ‘I became an object of fascination, I suppose. Then one or two individuals started picking on me on social media, and it started snowballing into unpleasantness.’ Certainly, local feelings do not seem to have been improved by Samantha’s decision to take on the courtesy title associated with the castle, Lady Carbisdale.
Certainly, local feelings do not seem to have been improved by Samantha’s decision to take on the courtesy title associated with the castle, Lady Carbisdale.
‘In Scotland, if you acquire an estate or a castle then you are the Lady of that castle,’ she explains. ‘The feudal system was abolished in 2004, but there are some aspects in the law which entitle a person to have a title on land. It seems people think that by taking the title it was my way of saying I was better than them, which is nonsense.’
Ill-feeling seems to have ramped up in particular last November, when it emerged Samantha was attempting to acquire three hectares of land from the Forestry Commission. It led to local mutterings about ‘Highland clearances’, in reference to the notorious eviction of tenants from land in the 18th and 19th century.
It wasn’t being used, she says, and she needed it to ‘help maintain the castle’s foundations and make structural repairs’. But she met a lot of opposition from a few individuals. ‘It’s not because they are against the sale of the land, because it’s of no use to anybody else other than the castle, but purely because of politics.’
After a council meeting in which Samantha says she was the subject of ‘homophobic and racist’ abuse – leading to the police being called – three council members subsequently resigned in protest.
She says locals now blame her for not having a community council, adding. ‘But I wasn’t the one to resign. It’s really become petty.’
Against this acrimonious backdrop, it is perhaps not surprising to learn that Samantha has started to feel frightened when left alone at night, especially given remarks on Facebook about the need to marshal ‘flaming torches’ which, while apparently made in jest, are, as she says, ‘unsettling’.
‘Of course we have the security cameras, and I make sure every door is locked and chained. Hate is a very powerful emotion, and it can drive people to do all sorts of things,’ she says quietly.
In fact, it has already happened: Samantha says she was assaulted in November after attending a tennis tournament in the community hall. ‘Somebody actually pushed me right on my chest, and I fell back onto the floor,’ she says. ‘He said, ‘There are children here’. I said: ‘What do you mean? I’m a 65-year-old woman, what do I do with the children?’ It was pure hate.’
The police were called but, she says, when a constable arrived to take statements, ‘nobody had seen anything’.
All this has been difficult enough, but the ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’ was when it emerged this month that Samantha was establishing the exclusive ‘Duchess Club’ for female entrepreneurs and leaders. Membership would be £10,000 and give access to facilities at the castle including a swimming pool currently under construction.
‘It quickly became ‘How can she invite a woman if she’s not a woman?’ and so on,’ she recalls. ‘It made me realise the antagonism was against not just me but the business model, and if they destroy a business then they will destroy income for the castle.’
Part of the problem, she believes, is that many locals are older, and not interested in the employment opportunities the castle could provide. ‘They’re retired, but we do need the younger population to remain in the Highlands to look after us,’ she says.
Samantha has made some friends, and there are many who have asked her not to leave. ‘I don’t want to tar everybody with the same brush; I’ve met some lovely people. Unfortunately, as I said, there are people rather naively following the crowd because they fear getting ostracised themselves.’
And so, reluctantly, the For Sale sign is up. The asking price is now a cool £5million, and when a suitable buyer is found Samantha will leave the place into which she says she has ploughed her heart and her soul – not to mention her life savings – for good.
‘I’m not an oligarch with millions. I worked hard in business, and this is my hard-earned money,’ she says. ‘But I don’t regret it and I’m proud of what I’ve done.
‘I really want people to come and see how this castle has been transformed, because many thought this an impossible task, but now it’s ready to thrive.
‘I really believe without my input, this castle would have gone beyond saving, and that is something which I’m very proud of.’
And she will only hand over the keys to someone committed to ensuring the castle’s continuity for future generations. ‘I wouldn’t want to let it go without some assurance that it will be preserved,’ she says.
That means staying as long as it takes until, finally, the iron gates to the estate clang shut behind her and Lady Carbisdale – and her fairytale vision – becomes a thing of the past.
