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

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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.

Craig House (Angus)

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

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

Ethie Castle is a 15,091 square feet (1,402.0 m2) 14th-century castle, situated around 3 miles north of the fishing town of Arbroath in Angus, Scotland.

Ethie Castle dates to around 1300, when the monks at nearby Arbroath Abbey built a sandstone keep. The castle passed through the hands of the de Maxwell family and into the ownership of Scotland's last Cardinal, David Beaton who was murdered in St. Andrews in 1546. Its association with Cardinal Beaton is still evident as the castle includes a small chapel and the Cardinal's Sitting Room, with its secret staircase to the Great Hall above.

The castle was purchased in 1665 by the Carnegie family, who later became the Earls of Northesk. The 7th Earl was a Vice Admiral and commanded with Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. As a tribute, the Earl was entitled to incorporate Trafalgar in his arms and this can still be seen set in a dormer at Ethie. In 1928 it was bought by William Cunningham Hector.

The castle is reputed to be the basis for the fictional Castle of Knockwhinnock in Sir Walter Scott's novel The Antiquary. Sir Walter Scott was a close friend of William Carnegie, 8th Earl of Northesk and frequently stayed at Ethie Castle.

The castle was restored by the chief of the Forsyth Clan, Alistair Forsyth and it now serves as the clan's seat.

Ethie 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

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

Fasque, also known as Fasque House, or Fasque Castle is a mansion in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, situated near the village of Fettercairn, in the former county of Kincardineshire.

Fasque was the property of the Ramsays of Balmain, and the present house was completed around 1809, replacing an earlier house. It was purchased in 1829 by Sir John Gladstone, 1st Baronet, father of William Ewart Gladstone, later Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, who often stayed there. Fasque was a family home of the Gladstones until the 1930s, and was open to the public during the last quarter of the 20th century. In 2010 Fasque House was bought by Fasque House Properties Ltd and restoration work was begun.

A previous house, known as Fasque, or Faskie, was located roughly 50 yards (46 m) north of the present site. In about the 1750s, Sir Alexander Ramsay, 6th Baronet of Balmain, who had been a local Member of Parliament, planted the beech avenues that survive today. William Adam (1689–1748) prepared a plan for the house which is illustrated in his Vitruvius Scoticus, although it was never executed. By 1790, the house was growing increasingly prone to damp, and was demolished only forty years after completion.

Sir Alexander, by then known as Alexander Ramsay-Irvine, died without heir in 1806, and the estate passed to his nephew, Alexander Burnett, who was made a baronet in 1806, and adopted the Ramsay surname. Although begun by Sir Alexander Ramsay-Irvine, the current house was not completed until about 1809. Approximately £30,000 was spent on the project. The house took over ten years to construct, with contemporary guide books describing its central hallway being open to the elements, as the world's largest indoor double spiral staircase was being constructed at the back of the hall. Following his death in May 1810, the younger Alexander's 2nd. son, also Alexander Ramsay, inherited the estate and the baronetcy, and kept Fasque for 19 years before having to sell it in the face of rising costs of its upkeep.

Fasque under the Gladstones
In 1829, the house was sold for £80,000 to John Gladstone, a Scottish merchant from Liverpool whose family (originally called Gledstanes) had been farmers in Biggar, before becoming wine merchants in Leith in the years following 1745. Following the death of their eldest daughter, Anne, in 1829, it took four years for the Gladstones to move up to the new property, from the now-demolished Seaforth House on the shores of the Mersey. In the winter of 1833, John, his wife Anne McKenzie, and their youngest daughter Helen, moved into Fasque for the first time. Their arrival coincided with one of the worst spells of weather ever recorded in Kincardineshire, with many of the trees to the north of the house (which had been planted originally in 1745) being blown down in high winds. The cold and the damp of the new house had a detrimental effect on Anne McKenzie Gladstone's health, and she died in 1835. Ten years later, in 1845, the Baronetcy of Fasque and Balfour was bestowed upon the elderly Sir John Gladstone, and to commemorate this, he built the Fasque Episcopalian Church in the grounds of the house, which is still used to this day. In its first decade, the Church also saw the burial of one of William Ewart Gladstone's offspring who died in childhood, and in the same year as its founding.

In December 1851, Sir John Gladstone died, passing the house on to his oldest son, Thomas, the eldest brother of William. Thomas's sibling rivalry had been strong over the years, but now, as the second Baronet (and from 1876, Lord Lieutenant of Kincardineshire), Thomas Gladstone and his wife Louisa Fellows, a relative of Queen Victoria, ran Fasque as an effective house for nearly 40 years, adding servants' quarters to the building itself, along with a school in the grounds. During that time, William Ewart Gladstone (who had come into possession of Hawarden Castle in north Wales, through his wife's family, the Glynns) visited his elder brother many times, and practised his hobbies of walking and tree-felling across the moors of the estate. The estate lands had slowly expanded during Thomas's tenure to encompass 80,000 acres (320 km2), bordering Balmoral to the north. Sir Thomas died in 1889, passing the Baronetcy on to his eldest son John, a bachelor soldier, who came home to run the estate with his sister Mary in the 1890s. After Thomas' death, William did not visit his nephew's estate again, and himself died in May 1898.

Fasque House remained a working home until 1932, when Lady Mary, who had survived her brother John by six years, passed on. At this point, Fasque House became disused, with much of the furniture covered with sheets, and rooms locked up for decades. The estate itself operated as before, but the main house was empty, although it remained "immaculately well preserved". Eventually, the Baronetcy passed through various family lines to end up with the 7th Baronet, Sir William Gladstone, great-grandson of the prime minister, and a former Chief Scout. In 1978, Sir William's younger brother, the naturalist Peter Gladstone, re-decorated Fasque, apparently whitewashing almost every wall surface himself, and opened it to the public for the first time in the September of that year, partly capitalising on the then-current popularity of the TV show Upstairs Downstairs. Fasque House remained open to summer visitors for over two decades, with the house's east wing almost entirely open to the public, and the west wing providing a home for Peter's family. A large auction sale of items from the house gained much publicity when it was held in the grounds in 1997. Peter died in 2000, with the estate now being run by Charles Gladstone, son of Sir William, the 7th Baronet. In 2003, the house was closed to the public, and since then specially arranged coach parties and wedding services have also been discontinued.

Recent developments
In August 2007, Fasque House was sold to a local developer who intended to convert the building into flats. However, it was quickly put back on the market, with an asking price of £1.9 million. In May 2009 it was still being marketed, though at the reduced price of £1m. In 2010 Fasque House was bought by Fasque House Properties Ltd, and a complete restoration of the house was begun. The building's use as a wedding venue was reinstated, alongside conference facilities and cottage rentals. This sale did not affect the Fasque and Glen Dye Estate, which is still owned by the Gladstone family.

Architecture
The house is a large sandstone building, in a symmetrical castellated style, with octagonal towers at the centre and corners of the main facade. The structure remains relatively unchanged since its completion. Sir John Gladstone added a third storey to the central tower in 1830, and built the portico of rusticated pillars in the 1840s. The drawing room was expanded in 1905, and some servants' quarters were added before the beginning of the First World War. Innovative use of electricity meant that Fasque was possibly the first house in Scotland to be lit by electric lights, and had an electronic buzzer system as early as 1890. It was also noted for having innovative firefighting and health and safety equipment in the 1920s. The house is a category A listed building.

Fasque 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

Drumtochty Castle is a neo-gothic style castellated mansion erected in the year 1812 approximately three kilometres northwest of Auchenblae, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. This castle stands on the southern edge of Drumtochty Forest. Other noted castles in Kincardineshire are Fasque House, Fetteresso Castle, Dunnottar Castle and Muchalls Castle.

The castle was built to the designs of James Gillespie Graham with further extensions c. 1815. Although the design for the extensions was again commissioned from Graham Gillespie, the actual work was undertaken by the Aberdeen City Architect John Smith. Miller speculates Gillespie Graham could have had a dispute with George Drummond, the owner, but considers Smith's closer proximity to the site is a more plausible scenario. Gillespie Graham was involved with further additions c. 1839.

During the Second World War, Drumtochty Castle was bought by the Norwegian government in exile and used as a boarding school for Norwegian children who were refugees from the German occupation of Norway.