Drum Castle

Drum Castle stands near Drumoak in Aberdeenshire, its oldest element a granite tower house raised between about 1280 and 1300 — one of the three oldest surviving tower houses in Scotland, and among the least altered. Tradition attributes its design to the medieval mason Richard Cementarius, who also built Aberdeen’s Brig o’ Balgownie. In 1323 Robert the Bruce granted the castle and its lands to William de Irwyn, his armour-bearer and secretary, and the property remained with Clan Irvine for more than 650 years, passing to the National Trust for Scotland in the mid-1970s. Successive generations reshaped the place around the medieval keep: a large wing was added in 1619 by the ninth laird, and in the 1870s Alexander Forbes Irvine oversaw a Victorian restoration that brought an arched entrance and angle tower to the courtyard. The castle carries the marks of a turbulent century — during the Covenanting wars it was attacked and sacked three times, and in 1636 Sir Alexander Irvine and his wife are said to have sheltered the outlaw Gilderoy. An older church nearby was adapted into a chapel during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the walled garden, restored from dereliction, now holds collections of historic roses.