Lews Castle is a turreted Victorian pile on the western edge of Stornoway, built in 1847 and surrounded by the only substantial woodland on Lewis — the Woodland Trust now manages the Castle Grounds as a community forest. The castle itself was restored and opened as the Museum nan Eilean in 2016, telling the story of the Western Isles from prehistory to the present day. The Lewis Chessmen — the famous set of 12th-century Norse chess pieces found on the island in 1831 — are represented here by replicas (the originals are split between the British Museum and the National Museum of Scotland).
The grounds are free to walk through at any time. Paths wind through mature beech and sycamore to viewpoints over Stornoway harbour and the Minch. It is a strange thing to walk in a real forest on an island where the natural landscape is entirely open moorland; Matheson planted tens of thousands of trees on what was bare hillside, and they have grown well.