DRUM CASTLE is near Banchory in the Grampian region of Scotland. This castle consists of the 13th century Tower of Drum, one of the very first and certainly among the most famous of medieval Scottish tower-houses, a simple rectangle with battlements and rounded corners 70ft high, whose walls at basement level are 12ft thick and linked to it a handsome Renaissance mansion with dormer windows and crow stepped gables built in 1619. The Tower of Drum was a royal keep in the ancient Forest of Drum, to which there is reference as early as 1247. The lands of Drum were bestowed by King Robert I on his armour bearer and clerk register William de Irwin in February 1323.
BALMORAL CASTLEand estate was purchase by Prince Albert, Queen Victorias husband , for £31,000 in 1852. They first arrived at Balmoral in September 1848. The estate first appears on record in 1484 when Alexander Gordon, second son of the first Earl of Huntly, paid an annual rent of £6.8s.6d for "Bouchmorale" as it was then called. The Gordons held Balmoral until 1662, when they sold it to the Farquharsons of Inverey. It was then sold to the Earl of Fife in 1798. The Balmoral estate now extends to about 30,000 acres, including Birkhall. Those who know its beauties will feel some sympathy with Queen Victoria's almost mystical devotion to the place, which she called "this dear paradise".
CRAIGIEVAR CASTLE Situated near Alford, in the Aberdeenshire area of Scotland, Craigievar Castle is the fairy tale castle par excellence. As a work of art it claims a Scottish place in the front rank of European architecture. It is a simple L-plan towerhouse, rising straight out of the ground for seven storeys and bursting forth into an efflorescences of delicately corbelled turrets crowned with simple conical roofs. It was built in 1626 for a Forbes laird called 'Willie the Merchant', who made his money by daring speculations in the Danzig trade. It has had no additions and has been continuously occupied by the Forbes family ever since, being sold to the National Trust for Scotland in 1963.
CRATHES CASTLE is situated in the Kincardineshire area of Grampian. The L-shaped towerhouse, together with its magnificent early 18th century formal garden and ancient yew hedges, is owned by the National Trust for Scotland. The house itself was begun in 1553 and finished in 1596, though it is not now thought that it took forty years to build. The later date appears to commemorate a remodelling of the upper parts by the Bells, a famous Aberdeenshire family of masons. Crathes is the ancestral home of the Burnetts of Leys. Four centuries of an abundant life have stamped an indelible character on the castle that belonged to the Burnetts of Leys for so long. This character is also apparent in the garden, which the late Lady Burnett tended with loving care.
BRAEMAR CASTLE was built by the Earl of Mar in 1628. In 1689, during Claverhouse's campaign, it was burnt by the Farquharsons of Inverey after they had out witted the Government troops of General Mackay. After many adventures it was leased for ninety nine years to the War Office, as a barracks for keeping watch on the still turbulent Highlands. To this five storeyed, turreted L-plan house, the War Office added a rectangular rampart or curtain wall with salients projecting from each face so as to form an eight pointed star - one of the most remarkable extant examples of a Hanoverian fort. The inscriptions on the woodwork inside, made in boredom by 18th century foot soldiers of the garrison, can still be examined.
CASTLE FRASER Although there was a towerhouse already on the site in the late 16th century, when Michael Fraser decided to build his grand new house, it was clearly far too modest for his requirements. Fortunately for posterity the castle was not damaged in the troubled 17th and 18th centuries, although the lands around were severely damaged. The Frasers themselves seem to have emerged relatively unscathed from these unsettled times, even collecting a Jacobite peerage from James, the 'Old Pretender', in 1723. The castle is a typical 16th century Z plan design with two towers, one square the other round or drum tower. The great carved armorial frontispiece is an expression of power and confidence and is signed 'I Bel', one of the two Master Masons (the other was Leiper) who worked on Castle Fraser.
GLAMIS CASTLE, which dates predominantly from the last quarter of the 17th century, contains fragments of much earlier building, and the site is thought to have been occupied by a royal residence in the 11th century. King Robert II granted the lands of Glamis to the Lyon family (Earls of Strathmore) in 1372. Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother spent much of her childhood here, and Princess Margaret was born there in 1930. The castle has remained in the family by direct descent since the 14th century.Fine collections of armour, furnishings, paintings and tapestries are to be seen in it.
BLAIR CASTLE is the seat of the Duke of Atholl, and lies just NW of the village of Blair Atholl. This is a private residence, but parts of the building are open to the public. The oldest part of the castle is known as Comyn's Tower, and the foundations of this probably date to 1269. In 1644 the Castle was occupied by the Marquess of Montrose, and was again garrisoned by Claverhouse in 1689.
After Claverhouse's daeth at Killiecrankie, his body was brought to Blair Castle, and his cuirass is among the exhibits there. In 1745 Prince Charles Edward Stuart and the Jacobite troops rested at Blair Castle while on their way South, and in the following year the structure was badly damaged during a bombardment aimed at dislodging some of the Duke of Cumberland's English troops accompanied by German mercenaries. At the end of the 18th century, the Castle was renovated, all the turrets and parapets being removed and the whole turned into a plain Georgian mansion house. In the Victorian era the turrets, towers and crow stepped gables were put back again.
HUNTLY CASTLE is near Huntly in the Grampian region of Scotland. A castle has been on this site since the 12th century. The Gordons became the Earls of Huntly in 1436 and they statred building the castle. The 1st Earl of Huntly died in 1470 and it was completed by his son. Around 1506 the 4th Earl began an extensive building programme. The remais of Huntly today are mainly remnants of the rebuilding programmes of the 4th and 5th Earls in the 16th and 17th centuries. Th e massive round tower symbolises Gordon strength and the elegant row of oriel windows expresses the artistic and aesthetic concerns of a noble family.
