The flourish of pepperpots, crowsteps and crenellated towers is deceptive, for this is a castle re-created. The Baronial detail belongs to David Bryce’s Victorian remodelling, yet the main range has Georgian sash windows and its walls are clearly older. The long, low south wing suggests 19th-century domestic offices, but things are never quite what they seem at Blair. Behind the uniform white harl lies a building with a history as complex and dramatic as that of the earls, marquesses and dukes of Atholl, who have been connected to the area since the 12th century.
The earliest part of the castle is named after Sir John Comyn (or Cumming), lord of Badenoch, who trespassed onto the territory of the Pictish earldom and, by 1269, had erected a small stone tower. The property was later returned, but, following the Wars of Independence, it came into royal ownership. The first in the present line was Sir John Stewart of Balvenie, half brother of James II, who was granted the earldom in 1457.
In about 1529, the year in which the 3rd Earl staged a great deer drive in honour of James V, whom he entertained in a ‘hunting sete’ of woven birch hung with tapestries, he raised the tower to five storeys and built a three-storey hall range. In 1595, the earldom reverted to the Crown, but was revived in 1629 in favour of John Murray of Tullibardine, a descendant through the female line. The first of the Murray Earls of Atholl, John built a stair tower in the angle between Cumming’s Tower and the hall and began an extension, but the Civil War intervened and work was abandoned.
Denne historien er fra March 11, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra March 11, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
