Field Visit
Date June 1989
Event ID 1112876
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1112876
Kinnaird Castle is a restored tower-house of the late 15th or early 16th century, which occupies a prominent rock outcrop on the Braes of Gowrie, overlooking the Carse. It consists of a well-appointed main block, four storeys and a garret in height (11.8m from E to W by 8.36m transversely over walls up to 2.15m thick at first-floor level), with a buttress at the SW angle which is carried up to the height of the main wall-head.
An entrance at first-floor level may have given access to the wall-walk of a barmkin, whose position enclosing the W side of the tower is indicated by the presence of a cut-back section of wall and tuskers at the NW angle of the main block, and the character of the buttress (both of which are 2m thick); the purpose of tusking at the NE angle of the main block is less clear. A mid 19th-century sketch of the tower (NMRS PT/13931), made prior to the restoration, shows it without a garret, but with a corbel course at the height of the main wall-head, together with projecting corbels, possibly for a machicolation, oversailing the main entrance.
To the E of the tower there is a gabled kitchen block (the fireplace was removed about 1955). It incorporated a number of dressed stones and a half dormer with a pediment bearing the initials PT/11/MO and the date 1610; the block has been remodelled more than once.
In the reign of William I (1165-1214) Kinnaird belonged to the family of that ilk; in 1674 it passed to the Threiplands, later of Fingask.
Visited by RCAHMS (IMS/PC) June 1989.
OSA 1793; NSA 1845; D MacGibbon and T Ross 1887-92; L Melville 1939; Reg Reg Scot 1971.
