Recording Your Heritage Online
Event ID 563277
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Recording Your Heritage Online
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/563277
Barra, from 15th century. Pleasing early 20th-century restoration of building whose history is complex and whose ambience is captivating. The structure forms three sides of a cobbled courtyard, the fourth being occupied by a screen wall, pierced by a doorway. The earliest part, the vaulted kitchen and adjacent hall on the ground floor of the west range, and the chamber above, may survive from a tower or keep associated with 'the Goodman', a Blackhall, an hereditary 'Forester and Coroner of the Garioch', recorded in the second half of the 15th century. An L-plan tower appears to have been built to the south-east by 1592, when the Blackhalls forfeited the castle.
The main phase of surviving building was the responsibility of the new owner, George Seton, Tutor and Vicar of Meldrum and Chancellor of the Diocese of Aberdeen, who heightened the south wing and erected conical-roofed towers at either end of the south façade and a stair-tower and caphouse in the centre, 1614-18. Decoration in the form of 1614 and 1618 datestones, an MGS monogram and three interlocked crescents testify to Seton's work. The castle was sold in 1658 to James Reid, an Aberdeen advocate, whose son, a Nova Scotia baronet, was responsible for inserting wooden panelling and creating the formal garden, of which the terrace and summer house with forestair survive.
In 1750 Barra was sold to John Ramsay, a 'Russian' merchant (ie he traded in Russia), who added the north wing in 1753, thus changing the alignment and requiring the creation of two piended pavilions in the outer court. From 1766, on the purchase of the adjoining estate of Straloch, to 1909, the castle was used as a farmhouse. It was restored 1910/11, in conjunction with George Bennet Mitchell, by Ramsay's great grand-daughter, Mary, who married Alexander Irvine of Drum and, herself, rebuilt all the farmhouses on Barra and Straloch.
The bare, weathered masonry of Seton's south front is set in a perfect succession of curves and angles, conveying a sense of immense age and tranquillity; charmingly French.
Taken from "Aberdeenshire: Donside and Strathbogie - An Illustrated Architectural Guide", by Ian Shepherd, 2006. Published by the Rutland Press http://www.rias.org.uk
