View from south east Digital image of E 15309 cn

Description View from south east Digital image of E 15309 cn

Date 18/6/2001

Collection Records of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS), Edinbu

Catalogue Number SC 769268

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of E 15309 CN

Scope and Content Riverside Cottages, Balmoral Estate, Aberdeenshire These picturesque, two-storeyed cottages stand to the east of the present castle in a wooded setting of the south bank of the River Dee. They were built to provide accommodation for the laundrymaids, and probably date from c.1836 when the earlier castle on the site was remodelled. They are constructed on an H-plan, with harled and painted walls, and have 12-paned Georgian windows at ground-floor level with shortened windows on the floor above. The front door is painted in 'Balmoral beige', a colour chosen by Prince Albert. In the mid-19th century, a large country estate like Balmoral provided enough dirty linen to keep four laundrymaids busy for six days a week. Washing on this scale required a full-scale laundry, which was usually built on the periphery of the servants' quarters or adjoining the stables. The scale of the task was enormous, with all the household linen from the castle as well as the royal family's clothes and the servants' clothes requiring to be washed, bleached, dried, mangled, ironed and folded. The task was even more arduous as Balmoral, being a sporting estate, produced large quantities of mud- and grass-stained garments on a daily basis as a result of the hunting pursuits of royal family, their guests and servants. Prince Albert and Queen Victoria bought the Balmoral estate in 1852 as a Highland retreat from the stresses of London life. They originally leased Balmoral Castle, a small, 15th-century Deeside castle that had been reconstructed in the 1830s for Sir Robert Gordon, before building a new, larger castle at their own expense in 1853-5. The new Balmoral Castle was to become Queen Victoria's 'dear place', and a favourite holiday residence for successive generations of the royal family. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/769268

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap