House Of Leask

House of Leask, 1826-7, Archibald Simpson. A formerly harled, two-storey granite rubble mansion-house comprising a main block and lower service wing. Dressings of basal and stringcourses are very fine; five-bay main elevation with central door and extravagantly tall ground-floor windows. Originally had a piended slate roof with Simpson's characteristically deep eaves. Burnt 1927.

House of Leask began as Leask, a Cuming property in the early 18th century, became Gordon Lodge on marriage of Barbara Cuming to Dr Alexander Gordon of Hilton and Straloch, a descendant of the Gordons of Pitlurg in Banffshire.

Their grandson, a major-general, renamed it Pitlurg after the ancestral lands, but his son, Captain Gordon Cumming Skene of Pitlurg, Dyce and Parkhill, commissioned Simpson to build the House of Leask, returning it to the original name.

Taken from "Aberdeenshire: Donside and Strathbogie - An Illustrated Architectural Guide", by Ian Shepherd, 2006. Published by the Rutland Press http://www.rias.org.uk

NK03SW 33.00 0263 3306

NK03SW 33.01 0210 3339 Home Farm of Pitlurg

NK03SW 33.02 02733 33067 Dovecot

NK03SW 33.03 026 330 Garden

Not to be confused with Pitlurg Castle (NJ 4358 4556), for which see NJ44NW 1.

Air photographs: AAS/94/07/G16/8-12.

NMRS, MS/712/21.

(Name cited as Pitlurg House and location as NK 0260 3300). Pitlurg/House of Leask; site of manor/remains of mansion. Two-storey ruinous 19th-century mansion house, comprising a main block and lower service wing. Built 1826-7 by architect Archibald Simpson; burnt 1927; roofless ruin 1989; proposals for restoration 1989.

Air photographs: AAS/94/07/G16/5-8, 11, 12, flown 10 March 1994.

[Periodical reference cited].

NMRS, MS/712/35.

NMRS REFERENCE:

Formerly called "Leask".

Built:- 1828, burned 1927.

(Source - Aberdeenshire 3rd. Statistical Account. Pub. 1960.)

Architect:- Archibald Simpson.

See 'The Leasks' by A Leask, 1980, which explains the name change.