A CHANCE sighting of an old photograph in a Scottish castle inspired Accrington-born George Marshall to turn the pages of history.

For staring out of it were the sepia faces of the committee for the relief of poverty in his home town in 1920 - and a fateful connection was made.

For its chairman was Sir George Bullough, the man who had inherited Accrington's major employer Howard and Bullough - and the man who had built Kinloch Castle on the Hebridean island of Rum - which he owned.

It provoked George, who attended Accrington Grammar School from 1944 to 1951, to discover the facts of the now decaying castle and the reasons behind its construction, which are revealed in a new book titled The Accrington Folly.

Although George Bullough had inherited half of the family business, which manufactured textile machinery and at one time employed as many as 2,000 people, alongside his brother, on the death of their father in 1891, his ambition was to enjoy the pleasures of an English gentleman.

His social aspirations are underlined with the story of how George removed his father's body from the family vault at Accrington's Christ Church, where the previous generation lay, and had it re-interred on Rum.

But it was to suffer further disturbances when the tiled vault he had constructed was likened to a public urinal by one influential visitor and a Greek temple-like structure was built instead, overlooking the sea at Harris.

To be accepted by the society he wanted to be part of, he followed the purchase of a 120ft steam yacht with the ambitious and costly construction of his castle.

It is known that the edifice had not been completed when the Boer War broke out in 1899, but that he married Monique Lilly de la Pasture in grand style there in 1903.

The heyday of Kinloch Castle was brief and it co-incided with the so-called golden' Edwardian era, which came to an abrupt end with the outbreak of war in 1914.

Standing at the head of Loch Scresort, 300 building workers from Accrington spent three years in its construction and they received an extra shilling a week if they were prepared to wear a kilt in George's newly-invented Rum tartan!

Ornate inside, outside George tried to create paradise, with grapes, peaches and nectarines growing under large areas of glass, humming birds hovering in domed, palm houses and turtles swimming in heated pools.

Guests paraded under colonnaded verandas and there was a rose garden, Italian garden and Japanese garden.

Sir George - he was knighted by King Edward VII in 1901 for patriotic activities during the Boer War - lost interest in the castle after the First World War, moving to Newmarket to race his string of horses.

Today the Friends of Kinloch Castle are pressing for the edifice to be restored.

l The Accrington Folly is published by Pen Press, priced £9.50, and is available from most bookshops.