Standing Building Recording
Date May 2007
Event ID 558809
Category Recording
Type Standing Building Recording
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/558809
NS 2725 0187 Systematic gazetteer of historic and built features on the Dalquharran Estate as part of a wider conservation plan. Work was undertaken during May 2007 and the principal findings of note include:
Dalquharran Old Castle Initial reassessment of the old castle included the recognition that the old castle originally consisted of a rectangular range with circular corner towers to both SE and SW (only the former now remains). Apparently associated with this was what appears to have been a walled enclosure – parts of
which are incorporated into the E wall of the E range, including a circular corner tower to the NE (now forming the base of a later angle tower).
The circular tower to the SW was removed and the corner buttressed; this work may have been coeval with the erection of a new stair tower at the NW corner of the main block – perhaps earlier 17th century.
Late 17th-century alterations included the addition of a new wing to the E, with circular NE angle tower, and a new stair-tower at the re-entrant with the original range. This bears a monogram, the date ‘1679’ and an inscription in Latin – a quotation from Buoncampagno de Signa’s Rhetorica Novissima of 1235. An
associated forecourt was laid out; its remains include gate-piers with frosted rustication to the N, and a dwarf wall containing intermittent recessed panels, surmounted by copes and iron railings, the latter now gone. Below the forecourt on its E side there seems to have been a further court, a service area that perhaps included stabling. In the later 18th century an ice-house was formed within one of the vaulted basement chambers of the main block of the castle.
17th-century gardens - The extent of gardens that were associated with the late 17th-century remodelling of Dalquharran Old Castle was better defined. A major avenue or ride ran northwards on the principal axis of the remodelled castle; this is still bordered with yew trees on its W side. Immediately to the W of this avenue lay a major walled garden, the E wall of which remains, still incorporating masonry of this period. The avenue
terminated at the Old Place of Dalquharran, which lay in the vicinity of the existing NW entrance to the policies.
An area of the low-lying ground on the S and W sides of the old castle was enclosed by walls, extensive sections of which remain to the W (running up to the later burial enclosure), and along the riverside. At one point the riverside wall angles outwards, where there had perhaps been a viewing platform or the base of a garden building. A riverside walk was defined by further yew trees; at its W end there had been an entrance within the perimeter wall. This may be the same as the re-erected 17th century gate piers that survive further W along the riverbank. Little now remains of further avenues that are recorded on Roy’s survey of c1750; parallel ditches of one were recognised from aerial photographic evidence, running NW from a circular
planting in the vicinity of the walled garden to the W policies entrance.
Late 18th-century and later landscape With the building of the new mansion of Dalquharran at the end of the 18th century the old castle became an eyecatcher for the new. The earlier walled garden was extensively remodelled, with new entrances within the perimeter wall and its wall head raised considerably.
In the later 19th century the walled garden was itself relocated to the NW of the new mansion house.
Archive deposited with RCAHMS.
Funder: Private client; Michael Laird Architects.
