Aberdeenshire Places Of Interest

Pitcaple Castle situated in Aberdeenshire some four miles north west from Inverurie on the A96. is a nth-cent. Z-plan tower-house with a 19th-cent. wing attached to it, designed by the Edinburgh architect William Burn. The incongruity of this combination is not at all oppressive, and has made possible its continuous habitation.

The Castle has two great round towers at diagonally opposite corners of the old rectilinear keep, one of the first and finest of examples of the Z-plan. In 1947 a box was found containing a series of documents that included a charter of 1457, by which James II granted the lands of 'Pethapil in the sheriffdom of Abirdene' to David Lesly, son of Sir William Lesly of Balquhain.

The Castle probably dates from that time. Originally it was surrounded by an outer wall with a gatehouse and an encircling moat supplied with water from the nearby river Ury.

Mary Queen of Scots dined at Pitcaple in September 1562 and planted a thorn tree under which her great-grandson Charles II danced in 1650. It survived until 1856, and has been succeeded by a red maple that was planted by Queen Mary in September 1923. Throughout the 17th cent.

Pitcaple lairds were at the heart of the struggle of King against Covenant and Commonwealth. In 1639 it was the headquarters of the Marquess of Huntly, the King's Lieutenant of the North, as he faced the Marquess of Montrose at the head of the Covenanters. In 1645 the Royalists captured and interned here Andrew Cant, firebrand preacher of the Covenant, along with Bailie Alexander Jaffrey of Aberdeen. On Sundays Cant preached publicly in the Castle's Great Hall. Eventually Cant and Jaffrey turned the tables on their gaolers by seizing the Castle and standing siege within it until relieved by their Covenanting friends, who then set the place on fire. The scorched stonework of the vaulted kitchen still testifies to this conflagration.

In 1650 the Castle had two distinguished residents the first the Marquess of Montrose on his way to his execution, and then only three months later King Charles II on his way to his crowning at scone. That poor prisoner 'James Graham, a traitor to his country', as the vindictive Covenant-men declared, slept the night in what is still called Montrose's Room, and there he was visited by the Lady of Pitcaple, his own cousin, who offered him a means of escape by way of a secret staircase in the wall. He looked at the painfully narrow aperture and replied, 'Rather than go down to be smothered in that hole I will take my chance at Edinburgh.' He was executed on 21 May, and in June of that same year King Charles landed at Garmouth on the spey. He was entertained at Pitcaple, danced under the thorn tree, and slept that night in the 'King's Room". The laird who was his host died fighting for him at the Battle of Worcester in the following year.

PITMEDDEN HOUSE

Pitmedden House is in the county of Aberdeenshire lies between the castle of Udny and Tolquhon, some 14 miles north north east of Aberdeen. The house with its great garden, was given to the National Trust for Scotland in 1952 by the late Major James Keith, a farming expert and Governor of the North of Scotland College of Agriculture.

Visitors pass through the stone doorway into the walled enclosure, with its legend on the lintel, Fundat 2 may 1675, surmounted by a panel bearing the initials S.A.S. for Sir Alexander Seton, over D.M.L. for Dame Margaret Lauder, his wife.

Sir Alexander was the 5th Seton Laird of Pitmedden. His father Sir John was the hero of the family. His brief but brilliant life was brought to an end when at the age of twenty-eight he was shot through the heart defending the Royal Standard at the head of a detachment of Royalists at the Battleof the Bridge of Dee in Aberdeen on 18 June1630. He left two young sons, James and Alexander, James, who went abroad during the Commonwealth, returned at the Restoration and served and fell Fighting in King Charles II's navy.

Sir Alexander, who now succeeded, had already carved out a career for himself in the law. He was an advocate, and had already been knighted by the King.

He became a Lord of Session in 1677, and took the title of Lord Pitmedden. In 1682 he became a Lord of Justiciary, and in 1694 a baronetcy of Nova Scotia was bestowed on him. On three occasions he represented the county of Aberdeen in the Scottish Parliament. But fortune turned against him. He Strongly opposed King James VII and II's moves to repeal the Test and Penal Laws, and was in consequence ejected from office.

Like many a politician before and since, he retired to his estate. The Great Garden, closely modelled on the garden of Holyroodhouse at this period, was his creation. Restoration was the work of the National Trust's expert, the late Dr J. S. Riehardson.

It is constructed in the sunken eastern half of a great square, extending to 475 ft in front of the house. Two pavilions at the north and south ends of the western wall of the garden have been restored to their state in Lord Pitmedden's day.

In the layout of the garden patterns in boxwood and yew, two designs were taken from a contemporary drawing of the King's Garden at Holyroodhouse by Parson Gordon of" Rothiemay. A third is now a rose garden, and the fourth, the principal feature.

Abirchirder Location

Aberdeenshire Places Of Interest

PITCAPLE CASTLE

PITMEDDEN HOUSE