Publication Account

Date 1996

Event ID 1016425

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1016425

RCAHMS: Exploring Scotland's Heritage - Aberdeen and North-east Scotland, 1996

As a traveller of old, the modern visitor approaches Castle Fraser from the north, down a gentle treelined slope, so that the castle reveals itself gradually, turrets first. It is thus really only when the visitor is standing on the level ground beside the castle, which now soars above him, that the full scale and splendour of the building are appreciated. The massing is awesome, the detail entrancing. The five main building campaigns can be discerned by viewing the castle from the south-west (the angle of the colour photograph).

The earliest part of the structure is the remains of the rectangular tower that was probably built in the middle of the 15th century by Thomas Fraser. This was a smaller version of the Tower of Drum (no. 31), 11.9m by 9.9m; it is now represented by the eastern two thirds of the ground and first floors of the central block on the south side. The entrance to this tower can be seen in the north wall of the hall on the first floor, immediately west of the blocked recess in the middle of the wall. In 1565, the fifth laird, Michael Fraser, and the mason Thomas Leiper (who was later to work at Tolquhon, no. 26) began to build a square tower at the north-western corner of the old block (this is the Michael Tower, the westernmost harled tower) and a round tower at the south-east corner, thus creating a modest Z-plan manor house. Both towers were taken to the level of the crown of the hall vault, ie the third floor. The entrance to this building would also have been at first-floor level, and is represented by the blocked recess in the centre of the north wall of the hall.

In the three decades before 1618, under the guidance of John Bell , one of the famous dynasty of north-east master masons, the manor house was transformed by Andrew Fraser. The west gable of the original central block was demolished and rebuilt 3.1m to the west. (The join is visible in the hall, while the exterior of the new west wall has been stepped in twice to clear the south windows of the Michael Tower, the south-east corner of which was demolished.) Two storeys were added to the Michael Tower and no fewer than four to the Round Tower, while the central block was also heightened. At the fourth-floor level a pronounced corbel table was built right round the building, stepping down at the new two-storeyed rounds and containing exuberant false stone cannon and cable moulding. On the north side a 'sumptuous frontispiece' containing the Fraser arms below the Royal arms was set in a richly carved frame; it may have been carved by the mason who did the Huntly doorpiece (no. 27). Originally gilded, it is a confident assertion of baronial splendour.

After 1618, Andrew Fraser, by now Lord Fraser, carried out further building; a kitchen with room above (the present Dining Room) was built against the north-east corner of the main block and then two wings of laich biggins were built running north from the castle to form the present courtyard.

Little was done to the castle in the 160 years between Lord Fraser's death in 1636 and Miss Elyza Fraser's inheritance of it. It is likely that her only alteration was the insertion of the present heavy, classical entrance in the middle of the south front (see no. 41). However, the impact of her greatnephew, Col Charles Mackenzie Fraser was altogether more far reaching. From 1814 he began 57 years of change which destroyed most of the early interiors; mercifully, the patient work of the earlier 20th century owners removed most of his additions, apart from the library, created from the long gallery by John Smith of Aberdeen.

Of the interiors, the Laigh Hall has its fine 15th century vault, the High Hall is much altered but preserves the old entrances, while the oratory and Priest's or Bailiff's room in the Michael Tower preserve something of the feel of the 17th century.

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