Recording Your Heritage Online
Event ID 563466
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Recording Your Heritage Online
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/563466
House of Monymusk, c.1584, hall restored 1937. In effect, a courtyard palace set on an exquisite bend in the Don, one of the greatest houses of Aberdeenshire, albeit now rather truncated. Traditionally associated with the Priory, it was
obtained from the last Commendator by William Forbes who is credited with extending the tower to an L-plan chateau. It was sold in 1712 to the Grants who are still in residence. The prodigious Forbes block was of at least four storeys, with
battlements and corbelled angle rounds. It has a vaulted ground floor, the hall at first floor, as usual, and retains its painted ceiling and heraldic panel over fireplace (badly restored between the wars). The tops of the second-floor windows have hoods sitting on sculptured corbels. This block was considerably recast by Alexander Jaffray, 1719-20, who removed the battlements down to the corbel table and added a platformed roof with a high library (with Carolean ceiling) on the west and two storeys of bedrooms on the 17th-century east-north-east wing. He also rebuilt the south
wing with its circular tower. A library wing of two storeys and the oriel window were added, 1886, J M Dick Peddie.
The house was once even more extensive, having had a railed courtyard to the south and east with a tower pavilion at the angle to mirror the tower on the south wing and the gates which are now at the entrance to the south drive, thus forming a 'claire voyée' facade. These gates, which are by Jaffray, have the piers set diagonally and rusticated in bands. Topped by tall urns. Walled garden recently restored.
Taken from "Aberdeenshire: Donside and Strathbogie - An Illustrated Architectural Guide", by Ian Shepherd, 2006. Published by the Rutland Press http://www.rias.org.uk
