Braemar Castle

Braemar Castle stands in the Aberdeenshire Highlands, close to the settlement of Braemar, an L-plan tower house raised in 1628 by John Erskine, Earl of Mar. It was built partly as a hunting lodge and partly to check the growing power of the neighbouring Farquharsons, and it succeeded an older stronghold on ground once held by the medieval Kindrochit Castle. The five-storey building is of granite beneath a coat of harl, with stone-vaulted ground-floor rooms, an iron yett at the entrance and heavy grilles across the lower windows — the fittings of a house built for troubled times. A star-shaped curtain wall of sharp-angled salients wraps the tower. Those troubled times came quickly: in 1689 John Farquharson of Inverey, the “Black Colonel”, burned the castle to keep it from government troops. After the Earl of Mar led the 1715 Jacobite rising the estate was forfeited to the Crown, and from 1748 the castle was leased to the government as a Hanoverian garrison. The soldiers withdrew in 1831 and the castle passed to the Farquharsons of Invercauld. Since 2006 it has been leased to the local community through the Braemar Community charity, and reopened to visitors in 2008 after restoration.