Bob Dylan sells Scottish Highlands estate for £4m

Bob Dylan has sold his retreat in the Scottish Highlands for more than £4m ($5m).

The Nobel Prize-winning musician behind hits such as Blowin' in the Wind and Like a Rolling Stone put Aultmore House on the market earlier this year.

The 16-bedroom A-listed stately home, near Nethy Bridge in Cairngorms National Park, was listed for sale for offers over £3m.

Whisky producer Angus Dundee Distillers has bought the property.

The firm, which owns the Tomintoul Distillery in the Cairngorms and Glencadam Distillery in Brechin, paid £4,257,650 for the estate.

Dylan, 82, bought the house with his brother David Zimmerman for £2.2m.

It has several reception rooms, including a music room, 11 bathrooms and a further seven attic bedrooms.

The house is surrounded by 25 acres of grounds featuring cottages, a large greenhouse, walled garden, follies, a fountain and a croquet lawn.

It was built between 1911 and 1914 as a holiday home for businessman Archibald Merrilees.

Merrilees founded Russia's first department store, M&M, in the mid-19th Century, but was forced into a sale after the family's fortunes were hit by the Russian Revolution in 1922.

Aultmore was later used as World War Two convalescent hospital and a finishing school owned by a New Zealand-born spy who survived imprisonment in Colditz.

The home featured in TV drama Monarch of the Glen and became a popular wedding venue before Dylan purchased it in 2006.

Estate Agents Knight Frank said he was selling the home after deeming it "surplus to requirements," revealing he and his brother had not visited since before the Covid pandemic.

Dylan has previously used imagery from the Highlands in his work, including in the song named after the area on the 1997 Grammy Award-winning album Time Out of Mind.

"My heart's in the Highlands wherever I roam / That's where I'll be when I get called home," he sang.

In 2004, Dylan was awarded an honorary doctorate in music from the University of St Andrews.

Tom Stewart-Moore, of Knight Frank property agency, said: “I am pleased to share that Aultmore House, which was launched to the market in July, has now been sold to its new custodians, who will usher this magnificent home into its next chapter.”