Field Visit
Date March 1984
Event ID 1200867
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1200867
NO88NW 2 8426 8548
The ruinous shell of this early 19th-century mansion incorporates at least two distinct portions of an older house. The earlier, which probably belongs to the 16th century, comprises a three storeyed block aligned on a SW-NE axis. The ground floor incorporates a range of barrel-vaulted cellars and a kitchen, and there is an extruded stair tower on the SE side; traces of what seems to have been another tower are visible at the S corner. To the N corner of this block, and extending NW at right-angles from it, there was added in the 17th century another of similar height. This faces SW into what may have been a courtyard and its three ground floor doorways bear, respectively, the Marischal arms, the date 1671 and the initials WEM/ ACM (William, Earl Marischal and Anne, Countess Marischal). When the house was enlarged in the 19th century, service corridors were added to the courtyard fronts of the two early blocks and their re-entrant angles were infilled to accommodate a new staircase and principal entrance aligned on an E-W axis. In 1645 the house was burnt by Montrose, and although it was rebuilt, it was apparently in a state of neglect by 1715. A well preserved 16th-century beehive dovecot stands on the edge of a field 140m SE of Fetteresso Castle (NO 8438 8539). About 120m SSW of the castle, an ice-house, ovoid in shape, has been built into the crest of a bank. A walled garden, terraces, a boat house (NO 8438 8536) and an artificial lake (now drained) are all that survive of the policies.
RCAHMS 1984, visited March 1984.
(W Robertson 1798; J Spalding 1851; Name Book 1865; J B Paul 1904-14; W Macfarlane 1906-8; W M Mackenzie 1927)
