Publication Account

Date 1996

Event ID 1016424

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1016424

Dating from a time of relative peace and confidence, after the strife of the Reformation and before the Covenanting trouhles, Craigievar has immense assurance and lightness. The house has survived, through good fortune and sensitive stewardship, largely untouched since 1626, with the result that a visit becomes a highly rewarding journey back to the 17th century. There are few so authentic experiences, in which the architecture,decoration, furnish ings and even the smells of woodsmoke and resin of a building unite, than a visit to this, the most serene of Scotland's many chateaux.

Craigievar was the product of a new type of laird, the cultured Scot who was also successful in the Baltic trade. William Forbes, otherwise known as 'Danzig Willie' or 'Willie the Merchant', was the second, and initially impecunious, son of the laird of Corse near Lumphanan. He attended Edinburgh University, made a good bourgeois marriage to the daughter of a provost of Edinburgh, Marjorie Woodward, and prospered in the trade with northern Europe, mainly Danzig (Gdansk). He did so well that his epitaph claimed

'The toil of others to obtain wealth was . ..

. . . to him a pastime.'

At any rate, by 1610 he could purchase the partly built castle at Craigievar from the Mortimer family and supervise its completion accord ing to his own distinctive taste.

Craigievar today rises alone our of the gentle brae, six storeys of soft pink harl, smooth and plain up to the fourth floor, thereafter a broken riotous skyline of corbelled turrets, ogee-topped towers, crown-like balustrades and serrated gables. Originally it stood in the north-eastern corner of an enclosing barmkin, of which an ivy-clad fragment survives to the west of the tower.

In plan, the castle consists of two blocks arranged in an L, with a small square tower in the angle. The single door is in the small angle tower and is thus protected. The top third of the castle is projected out on an ornate corbel-table supporting unusually large (two-storeyed) turrets. It is adorned with crowstepped gables and grotesque masks (concealing shot-holes) and decorated water spouts as well as ogival-roofed rounds and almost classical balustrades. This is the joyful spirit of the Renaissance, translated into a uniquely Scottish architecture, called Scots Baronial, of which Craigievar is the crowning achievement. It is generally accepted that this was the work of one of the Bell dynasty of master masons who built Castle Fraser and Midmar, possibly I (John) Bell. The castle was completed by 1626.

The design of the interior is no less skilful, there being the remarkable, in view of the narrowness of the tower's base, total of nineteen apartments. Of these, the great hall on the first floor is one of the finest rooms of any period in Scotland and is little altered in 360 years. At once medieval and Renaissance in feel, it is altogether entrancing. Its basic structure, a rectangular hall with a four-part groined vault, wooden screens and gallery, is medieval in inspiration, but the plasterwork which clads the vault in a riot of strap work, portrait medallions and elaborate decorative pendants is like the ceiling of an Elizabethan country house. The major feature of the hall, the great fireplace, is of Gothic proportions, surmounted by a vast plaster Royal Arms and supporters, the whole flanked by classical caryatids. (Wi llie the Merchant was allowed to display the Royal Arms-in their proper Scottish quartering-as he was a tenant in chief of the king and could exercise justice on the King's behalf on his lands.) Painted and gilded, this centrepiece would have added drama to the sittings of the Barony court. The plasterwork on the vault was done in 1626 by itinerant English craftsmen using moulds that were also used at Bromley by Bow, Glamis and Muchalls. The bowed oak door in the north-western corner leads to the private stairs to the laird's bedroom.

The other main apartment on this floor, the Withdrawing Room, is a fitting contrast to the hall. Panelled in Eastland boards of Memel pine the 1625 ceiling is low but also highly decorated, Queen Margaret of Scotland (1057-93) being the central motif.

The second floor contains only the Tartan Bedroom, with fine plasterwork even in a tiny dressing room. off, as the vault of the hall occupies the main tower at this level. On the third floor is the main or Queen's bedroom, to which the private stair leads from the dais end of the hall. The Blue Room, on the floor above, is more spacious, the walls now being corbelled out. Many of the twenty-four shot-holes are at this level, in the turrets. The

third-floor bedroom fifth floor contains another notable room, the Long Gallery, which would have been used as a promenade in poor weather, for some sittings of the Barony court or as a grand reception room, originally richly decorated with heraldry and pictures.

Above all these interlocking rooms, a narrow stair leads to the roof of the little square tower. Here, six storeys up, is a fine solid platform with an elegant balustrade which overtops even the turrets and gablets; only the splendid gilded weather cock of the Forbeses on the adjacent ogee is higher.

Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: Aberdeen and North-East Scotland’, (1996).