Nether Towie

NJ41SW 147 4463 1190

The farmsteading at Nether Towie has undergone numerous changes since the 19th century, when it was depicted on the 1st edition of the OS 6-inch map (Aberdeenshire 1870, sheet LXI). Of the fourteen buildings shown then, only the farmhouse is still inhabited, and most of the rest have been removed. The exceptions are the ruins of a cottage and a mill, the former standing adjacent to a U-plan range at the foot of the fields to the NE, and the latter on the S side of the gully about 50m S of the same range. The range itself, which is now used as a store for straw bales, replaced an earlier building some time before 1902.

As depicted on the 1st edition of the OS 6-inch map, the farmsteading extended over a distance of 200m, built around two large garden enclosures, the southerly of which contained the site of the medieval chapel (NJ41 SW 8). A pond at the ENE end of these enclosures supplied water to power the mill in the gully, and also what appears to have been a second mill lying at the E end of the southern of the two enclosures. Another building lay along the S side of this enclosure, and there was also a U-plan range across the track to the S. Three other buildings lay around the farmhouse to the NW of the gardens, and there was a steading beneath the modern barns and sheds to the SW.

Of the buildings around the farmhouse, all of them appear to have been removed by 1902, but the 2nd edition of the map (1902, sheet LXI.SE) shows that a new building had been constructed immediately to the NE of the farmhouse. The steading was ranged around a central courtyard, within which there was a probable midden hollow. The cottage that still survives as a shell at the foot of the fields to the NE, had a garden on the S, and the building that was replaced by the adjacent range was probably a byre.

Visited by RCAHMS (JRS), 1 March 2000.