General view.

Description General view.

Date 20/9/1884

Collection Papers of Erskine Beveridge, antiquarian, Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland

Catalogue Number SC 742969

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of PT 1664

Scope and Content Grandtully Castle, Perth & Kinross, from the south Grandtully Castle is a spectacular tower-house which stands amid beautiful countryside on the south bank of the River Tay near Aberfeldy. Originally built c.1400 as a square keep, the castle was rebuilt and extended in the late 16th century, and altered in 1626 to suit the requirements of the time. Erskine Beveridge, the Victorian photographer, photographed the house in 1884. The castle is built of warm-coloured local rubble, and constructed on a Z-plan with a square main block, and square towers projecting at the north-east and south-west (left) corners. It has the unusual addition of a tall, circular stair-tower (left) in the west re-entrant angle of the south-west tower. In 1626 the stair-tower was heightened to form a watch-chamber, and capped with a distinctive curved slated roof. At the same the entire upper storey and roofline of the house were remodelled. The main entrance to the castle is in the south-west tower. According to the usual building practice of the time, the main staircase to the first floor would have been contained in this tower too, with a round turret corbelled out in the west re-entrant angle to allow the staircase to continue to the upper floors. Here this arrangement has been replaced by the large, circular tower which rises five storeys directly from ground level. This deviation from the normal practice was apparently to allow the provision of a guardroom at ground-floor level to protect the doorway, and secure an underground pit-prison directly below, reachable only from the guardroom floor. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

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File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap