Finavon Castle lies on the River South Esk, about a quarter of a mile south of Milton of Finavon village and five miles to the north-east of Forfar in Angus, Scotland. The name is applied both to a ruined 17th-century castle, as well as the 19th-century mansion house 130m to the west.

The estate was the property of the Lindsay Earls of Crawford from 1375, who built the now-ruined castle. David Lindsay, 10th Earl of Crawford, married Margaret, the daughter of Cardinal David Beaton, at Finavon in 1546.

Extravagance ruined the Crawford fortunes, and in 1625 the barony of Finavon was disposed of by a forced sale to Alexander Lindsay, 2nd Lord Spynie. It passed through the Carnegie family, the Gordon Earls of Aboyne and the Gardynes.

In 1843 the Castle was bought by Thomas Gardyne of Middleton. Through an 18th-century marriage he came of the old Lindsay stock. His descendant, Lieutenant-Colonel Alan David Greenhill Gardyne died in 1953, leaving the estate to a daughter, Mrs Susan Mazur.

The castle
The castle was an L-plan tower-house of five storeys, with a garret and a courtyard. The tower visible today dates from about 1600. Excavations have revealed that the tower is an adjunct tacked onto the north-east corner of a much older, more extensive structure.

The house
The house is a Scottish baronial style mansion built in 1865 for the then laird, David Greenhill Gardyne, by Messrs Carver and Symon of Arbroath. Part of the castle is now let as holiday accommodation.

Finavon Castle

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Melgund Castle, lying around 2 kilometres due east of Aberlemno in Angus, Scotland, is a restored 16th-century house which today serves as a private residence.

The castle is generally said to have been built in 1543 on the orders of Cardinal David Beaton as a home for himself and his mistress, Margaret Ogilvie. However, Charles McKean has argued that the work of the 1540s was a re-modelling of an earlier building. It much later passed by marriage to the Earls of Minto, who were granted the title Viscounts Melgund, presently used by the heir to the earldom. The building has been made to look like a 16th-century wing added to a late 15th-century tower although in fact it appears to be all mid 16th century. Archaeological investigations were carried out at the castle between 1990 and 1996. The castle was long in a semi-ruined state, and lacking a roof, until restored by Benjamin Tindall Architects.

Melgund Castle

Guthrie Castle is a castle and country house in Angus, Scotland. It is located in the village of Guthrie, 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) east of Forfar, and 29 kilometres (18 mi) north-east of Dundee. The castle dates back to the 15th century, although much of the present building is of 19th-century origin. It is now a private house.

Guthrie Castle comprises a tower house, originally built by Sir David Guthrie (1435–1500), Treasurer and Lord Justice-General of Scotland, in 1468. The Guthrie family later built a house beside the tower. In 1848, the two were linked by a baronial style expansion, to designs by David Bryce. The historic keep remained in the Guthrie family until 1983, with the death of Colonel Ivan Guthrie.

Restoration
In 1984 Guthrie Castle was purchased by Daniel S. Peña, Sr., an American businessman. Peña restored the castle to its 19th-century condition, and built a golf course within the estate in 1994/95. In 2003, the castle and its grounds were opened to the public, for wedding parties, corporate functions and for group bookings. But in the year 2017, the owners have decided that it will no longer be open to the public and will remain a private house.

Guthrie Castle

Airlie Castle is a mansion house in the parish of Airlie, Angus, near the junction of the Isla and Melgund rivers, 9 kilometres west of Kirriemuir, Angus, Scotland. A castle was built on the site in c. 1432 and was burnt out in 1640, with a mansion house built incorporating and on top of some of the ruins in c. 1792–93, and occupied roday.

King James I of Scotland granted lands to Walter Ogilvy of Lintrathen, Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, in 1432. Walter Ogilvy then built the castle at the confluence of the River Isla and the Melgam Water. It sits on a raised position with a steep 400ft drop to the rivers below. A moat on the eastern approach further protected the castle. It became a stronghold and chief residence of the Ogilvies.

The castle consisted of a rectangular courtyard with walls three meters thick. The east wall of the original courtyard still stands; it is about 36 metres long and 9 metres tall. An entrance gateway that now has a square tower on it sits at the north end of this wall, though the tower was built later than the original courtyard.

In 1639 at York Charles I created James Ogilvy the 1st Earl of Airlie. James refused to sign the National Covenant. Furthermore, during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms the Ogilvies supported King Charles I and the Royalist cause. Parliamentarian troops under the command of Archibald Campbell, 8th Earl of Argyll destroyed the castle in 1640; the ballad "The Bonnie Hoose o' Airlie" describes the incident. Campbell also burnt the Ogilvies's castles at Craig and Forter.

The Ogilvies did not rebuild Airlie Castle. James Ogilvy (d. 1731), grandson of the first Earl, took part in the Jacobite rising of 1715 and was attainted; consequently on his father's death in 1717 he was not allowed to succeed to the earldom, although he was pardoned in 1725. George II confiscated the castle.

In 1778 David Ogilvy too received a pardon and he returned to Scotland from exile in Versailles. He had a new mansion built between 1792 and 1793 that incorporated the parts of the Castle that were still standing.

Airlie Castle

Cortachy Castle is a castellated mansion House at Cortachy, Angus, Scotland, some four miles north of Kirriemuir. The present building dates from the 15th century, preceded by an earlier structure that was owned by the Earls of Strathearn. It was acquired by the Ogilvies in 1473 and substantively modified in the 17th and 19th centuries. In 1820 it was "romanticised", as was the fashion of the day, by the addition of crenellations, plus other alterations by R & R Dickson. Part of the building was damaged by fire in 1883 and it was extensively rebuilt in the following two years by Kinnear & Peddie.

Cortachy Castle is a Category B listed building.

The castle is said to be haunted by the spirit of a drummer.

Cortachy Castle

Glamis Castle is situated beside the village of Glamis in Angus, Scotland. It is the home of the Earl and Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne, and is open to the public.

Glamis Castle has been the home of the Lyon family since the 14th century, though the present building dates largely from the 17th century. Glamis was the childhood home of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, wife of King George VI. Their second daughter, Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, was born there.

The castle is protected as a category A listed building, and the grounds are included on the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes in Scotland, the national listing of significant gardens.

lamis is set in the broad and fertile lowland valley of Strathmore, near Forfar, county town of Angus, which lies between the Sidlaw Hills to the south and the Grampian Mountains to the north, approximately 20 kilometres (12 mi) inland from the North Sea. The estate surrounding the castle covers more than 57 square kilometres (14,000 acres) and, in addition to parks and gardens, produces several cash crops including lumber and beef. There are two streams running through the estate, one of them the Glamis Burn. An arboretum overlooking Glamis Burn features trees from all over the world, many of them rare and several hundred years old.

History
The vicinity of Glamis Castle has prehistoric traces; for example, a noted intricately carved Pictish stone known as the Eassie Stone was found in a creek-bed at the nearby village of Eassie.


Back of the castle

Rosa 'Glamis Castle', a rose was named after Glamis Castle by the English rosegrower David Austin
In 1034 King Malcolm II was murdered at Glamis, where there was a Royal Hunting Lodge. In William Shakespeare's play Macbeth (1603–06), the eponymous character resides at Glamis Castle, although the historical King Macbeth (d. 1057) had no connection to the castle.

By 1376 a castle had been built at Glamis, since in that year it was granted by King Robert II to Sir John Lyon, Thane of Glamis, husband of the king's daughter. Glamis has remained in the Lyon (later Bowes-Lyon) family since this time. The castle was rebuilt as an L-plan tower house in the early 15th century.

The title Lord Glamis was created in 1445 for Sir Patrick Lyon (1402–1459), grandson of Sir John. John Lyon, 6th Lord Glamis, married Janet Douglas, daughter of the Master of Angus, at a time when King James V was feuding with the Douglases. In December 1528 Janet was accused of treason for bringing supporters of the Earl of Angus to Edinburgh. She was then charged with poisoning her husband, Lord Glamis, who had died on 17 September 1528. Eventually, she was accused of witchcraft, and was burned at the stake at Edinburgh on 17 July 1537. James V subsequently seized Glamis, living there for some time.

In 1543 Glamis was returned to John Lyon, 7th Lord Glamis. In 1606, Patrick Lyon, 9th Lord Glamis, was created Earl of Kinghorne. He began major works on the castle, commemorated by the inscription "Built by Patrick, Lord Glamis, and D[ame] Anna Murray" on the central tower.The English architect Inigo Jones has traditionally been linked to the redesign of the castle, though Historic Scotland consider the King's Master Mason William Schaw a more likely candidate, due to the traditional Scottish style of the architecture.

During the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, soldiers were garrisoned at Glamis. In 1670 Patrick Lyon, 3rd Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, returned to the castle and found it uninhabitable. Restorations took place until 1689, including the creation of a major Baroque garden. John Lyon, 9th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, succeeded in 1753, and in 1767 he married Mary Eleanor Bowes, heiress to a coal-mining fortune. He set about improving the grounds of the castle in the picturesque style in the 1770s. The south-west wing was rebuilt after a fire in the early 19th century. In the 1920s a huge fireplace from Gibside, the Bowes-Lyon estate near Gateshead, was removed and placed in Glamis' Billiard Room. The fireplace displays the coat of arms of the Blakiston family; Gibside heiress Elizabeth Blakiston had married Sir William Bowes. Several interiors, including the Dining Room, also date from the 18th and 19th centuries.

In 1900, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon was born, the youngest daughter of Claude Bowes-Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne and his wife, Cecilia (née Cavendish-Bentinck). She spent much of her childhood at Glamis, which was used during the First World War, as a military hospital. She was particularly instrumental in organising the rescue of the castle's contents during a serious fire on 16 September 1916. On 26 April 1923 she married Prince Albert, Duke of York, second son of King George V, at Westminster Abbey. Their second daughter, Princess Margaret, was born at Glamis Castle in 1930.

Since 1987 an illustration of the castle has featured on the reverse side of ten pound notes issued by the Royal Bank of Scotland.[9] Glamis is currently the home of Simon Bowes-Lyon, 19th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, who succeeded to the earldom in 2016.

Glamis Castle

Kinnaird Castle is a 15th-century castle in Angus, Scotland. The castle has been home to the Carnegie family, the Earl of Southesk, for more than 600 years.

14th century
Charters show a mansion had existed on the property.

15th century
A castle was listed onsite in 1409, when the estate was granted to the Clan Carnegie. After the Battle of Brechin on 18 May 1452, the castle was burnt by Alexander Lindsay, 4th Earl of Crawford as Clan Carnegie had supported King James II of Scotland.

17th century
In 1617, King James VI stayed at Kinnaird. King Charles I and Charles II also visited the castle. James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose spent 3 years at Kinnaird from 1629.

18th century
During the winter of 1715, James Francis Edward Stuart (The Old Pretender) spent some time at the castle. As punishment for supporting the Jacobite rising of 1715, the estate was confiscated. The castle was transformed by the architect, James Playfair in 1791 into a large house.

19th century
The castle returned to Clan Carnegie ownership in 1855 and was remodeled in Victorian baronial style.

20th century
The castle burnt to the ground in 1921 and was rebuilt.

Kinnaird Castle

Colliston Castle is a 16th-century Z-plan tower house, altered and extended in the 18th and 19th centuries. It is located 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) north of Arbroath, in Angus, Scotland, and remains occupied.

History
Colliston was part of the lands of Arbroath Abbey from its foundation in the 12th century. On 25 July 1544, David Beaton, Abbot of Arbroath and Archbishop of St Andrews, granted the lands of Colliston, Knives, Park of Conon, and Guthrie Hill, to John Guthrie and his wife Isobel Ogilvie. Colliston was retained by the Guthries until the late 17th century, when it passed to the Gordon family. By 1820 George Chaplin was in possession of Colliston, and was succeeded by his nephew George Robertson Chaplin of Auchengray, and then George Chaplin Child Chaplin, M.D. He died in 1883, and was succeeded by Mr Peebles of Somerset House, London. It was purchased in 1920 by Major R.F.D. Bruce, whose wife continued to live there after his death. It was sold several times during the 20th century, and most recently in 2011. The house is currently available for holiday rentals. It is a category B listed building.

Description
The original Z-plan part of the castle of Colliston bears the date 1583 (sometimes misread as 1553). It consists of a main block with two round towers projecting at opposite corners, and a stair turret rising in one of the re-entrant angles between the main block and tower. This tower, which also houses the entrance to the castle, is corbelled out at the top to form a gabled watch-chamber. The plan is similar to Claypotts Castle and is amply provided with wide splayed gun-loops and circular shot-holes for defence. The wall heads and the entire upper storey were remodelled several times and are not original. A later doorway is dated 1621, and the north and east wings were added in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Colliston Castle

Edzell Castle is a ruined 16th-century castle, with an early-17th-century walled garden. It is located close to Edzell, and is around 5 miles (8 km) north of Brechin, in Angus, Scotland. Edzell Castle was begun around 1520 by David Lindsay, 9th Earl of Crawford, and expanded by his son, Sir David Lindsay, Lord Edzell, who also laid out the garden in 1604. The castle saw little military action, and was, in its design, construction and use, more of a country house than a defensive structure.[1] It was briefly occupied by English troops during Oliver Cromwell's invasion of Scotland in 1651. In 1715 it was sold by the Lindsay family, and eventually came into the ownership of the Earl of Dalhousie. It was given into state care in the 1930s, and is now a visitor attraction run by Historic Scotland (open all year; entrance charge). The castle consists of the original tower house and building ranges around a courtyard. The adjacent Renaissance walled garden, incorporating intricate relief carvings, is unique in Scotland. It was replanted in the 1930s, and is considered to have links to esoteric traditions, including Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry.

Origins
The first castle at Edzell was a timber motte and bailey structure, built to guard the mouth of Glenesk, a strategic pass leading north into the Highlands. The motte, or mound, is still visible 300 metres (980 ft) south-west of the present castle, and dates from the 12th century. It was the seat of the Abbott, or Abbe, family, and was the centre of the now vanished original village of Edzell. The Abbotts were succeeded as lords of Edzell by the Stirlings of Glenesk, and the Stirlings in turn by the Lindsays. In 1358, Sir Alexander de Lindsay, third son of David Lindsay of Crawford, married the Stirling heiress, Katherine Stirling. Alexander's son, David, was created Earl of Crawford in 1398.

Edzell became the property of a junior branch of the Lindsay family descended from the 3rd Earl, and in 1513 it was inherited by David Lindsay (d. 1558). Around 1520, David Lindsay decided to abandon the original castle, and built a tower house and barmkin, or courtyard, in a more sheltered location nearby. The selection of a site overlooked by higher ground to the north suggests that defence was not the primary concern. David became the Earl of Crawford in 1542, on the death of his cousin the 8th Earl, who had disinherited his own son Alexander, the "Wicked Master". He proceeded to extend the simple tower house, in around 1550, by the addition of a large west range, incorporating a new entrance gate and hall. Lord Crawford also built Invermark Castle, 12 miles (19 km) north of Edzell, possibly as a hunting lodge, at around the same time.

Sir David Lindsay, Lord Edzell
David Lindsay, the 9th Earl's son, was educated in Paris and Cambridge, and travelled in continental Europe. His father had nominated the son of Alexander, the Wicked Master, as heir to the earldom, returning the title to the senior line of the family, and thus Lindsay did not succeed to the earldom on his father's death. However, he was knighted in 1581, became a Lord of Session (a senior judge), taking the title Lord Edzell, in 1593, and in 1598 was appointed to the Privy Council. A Renaissance Man, he undertook improvements to his estates, including mining and woodland planting. Two German prospectors from Nuremberg, Bernard Fechtenburg and Hans Ziegler, were invited to search for precious metals around Edzell.

In August 1562, David Lindsay received Mary, Queen of Scots, at Edzell. The Queen was on a Royal progress, with the aim of subduing the rebellious Earl of Huntly, and spent two nights at Edzell. During her stay she convened a meeting of the Privy Council, attended by the nobility of Scotland. Her son, King James VI, visited Edzell twice; on 28 June 1580, and in August 1589.

Sir David further extended the castle in the late 16th century, with the addition of a large north range with round corner towers. He laid out the garden in 1604, with symbols of England, Scotland and Ireland, to celebrate the Union of the Crowns of the previous year, when James VI acceded to the English throne on the death of his cousin, Elizabeth I. Sir David died in 1610, heavily in debt as a result of fines handed down for the unruly conduct of his son, and with both the garden and the north range incomplete.

Damage and decline
Edzell was not affected by the campaigns of the Royalist Marquess of Montrose in the 1640s, although other properties of the Covenanting Presbyterian David Lindsay (son of Sir David), were attacked. During the Third English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell invaded Scotland and, in September 1651, his troops took Edzell, and were stationed there for one month. By the time of the Presbyterian settlement of 1689, the Lord of Edzell, David's son John Lindsay, had switched allegiances from Presbyterianism to Episcopalianism. Along with the parish minister, he was barred from the parish church, and Episcopal services were held in the great hall at Edzell.

The castle began to decline around the time of the 1715 Jacobite rising. The last Lindsay lord of Edzell, another David, was a Jacobite, a supporter of the exiled James Stuart, the "Old Pretender". Faced with mounting family debts, David sold the castle to the 4th Earl of Panmure, a fellow Jacobite, for £192,502 Scots, equivalent to £16,042 sterling. Lord Panmure, however, forfeited his lands and property for taking part in the failed rebellion. Edzell was sold, by the Crown, to the York Buildings Company, a London waterworks company which had branched into the buying and selling of forfeited property. They proceeded to "asset strip" the property.

The castle saw its last military event in 1746, when a unit of government troops, of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, occupied the building, causing further damage. By 1764, the York Buildings Company was bankrupt, and the remaining contents of the castle, including the roofs, were removed and sold to pay the company's creditors. The avenue of beech trees, which linked the castle and the village, was felled, and the property was sold to William Maule, Earl Panmure, nephew of the attainted Earl of Panmure. He died in 1782, and the property passed to his nephew, George Ramsay, 8th Earl of Dalhousie.

Later history
The castle remained the property of the earls of Dalhousie, who appointed a caretaker from the 1870s, and built a cottage for him in 1901, which is now in use as a visitor centre. In 1932, the walled garden passed into state care, followed by the rest of the castle in 1935. The castle and garden are currently maintained by Historic Scotland and are open to the public year-round. The motte and castle are protected as Scheduled Ancient Monuments, and the garden is included in the Inventory of Historic Gardens and Designed Landscapes, the national listing of significant gardens. The caretaker's house is a Category B listed building.

Edzell Castle

The house was built for Sir Thomas and Mary Wedderspoon in 1902, a fact immortalised in stone above their bedroom.

The site however goes much further back. The house sits on an ancient mound that was dug by hand back in the 11th Century it was a very effective defensive design now known as Motte and Bailey. When you see the topography of Castleton you can clearly visualise the layout with the little wooden castle (Castle-ton) on top of the motte (mound) and the low ground, the Bailey which was tucked in around the motte providing shelter, community space and protection. The natural burn that runs past Castleton would have been breached to fill the ditch that encircles the whole land form, and access would have been via a bridge that could be easily defended.

There are 3 bridges that cross the Commerton Burn at Castleton, the most interesting is the old road bridge built in 1784. You can still see the date carved in the stone, look carefully at the picture below.

With the advent of the motor car, the old bridge that was only wide enough for a horse and cart, was replaced by the main A94 road. Today the bridge stands unchanged and undamaged in the field used only by whatever livestock is gently grazing there.

To put the old bridge in to context this is what was going on in 1784 when it was built...

King George III was on the throne and not yet mad
William Pitt the Younger was the new Prime Minister
Napoleon Bonaparte was only 15 years old
The French Revolution was still 5 years off
Bonnie Prince Charlie was in his early 60's and living quietly in Italy
Robert Burns hadn't yet written either Auld Lang Syne or Tamoshanter
ENJOY SOME MORE IMAGES FROM AROUND CASTLETON

Castleton of Eassie

Craig House is situated off the A92 on the south side of the Montrose Basin.

The area around Craig House is generally open arable land with little tree cover. The ground rises slowly to the south of the house. Principal views are to the north over the Montrose Basin and to the town of Montrose from the southernmost walled garden and perimeter woodland belts.

The designed landscape at Craig House is largely confined to the walled gardens around the house. In the 19th century Craig House was linked to the Rossie estate as a dower-house, but has reverted to separate ownership. There is no longer a substantial house at Rossie and its landscape is degraded.

Craig House is a two-storey and attic L-plan house forming two sides of a courtyard. It was rebuilt in 1637 incorporating two towers of an earlier date. The Entrance Gateway consists of an entrance arch flanked by two round defensive towers. The 17th-century Stables which are two stories in height and of rubble and slate construction, are now partly ruinous. The Walled Gardens comprise three 17th-century rubble enclosures with walls 4-5m high, which have been patched and added to over the years. In the North Walled Garden the north and east walls are brick-lined for fruit growing. There is an entrance gateway in the west wall of the north garden which would have been the access from Rossie Castle when Craig was the garden for that castle. Next to the entrance is a blocked-up earlier doorway. Two Bee Boles flank the doorway in the north wall of the garden on the west side of the house. A smaller wall cavity is situated in the south-eastern corner of the eastern walled garden. The South Stone Entrance Gate Piers are of a composite date incorporating earlier 18th-century masonry fragments, particularly the pineapple finial. The 19th-century, single-storey Gardener's Cottage is situated to the north-west of the north garden. The Obelisk on the top lawn in the garden to the south of the house was originally installed at Holly House in Montrose.