Birse Castle, Aberdeenshire
Photo © Colin Smith, 23 March 2008
Birse Castle, Aberdeenshire
Photo © Colin Smith, 23 March 2008
Birse Castle, Aberdeenshire
Photo © Simon Horne, 30 October 2005
Birse Castle, Aberdeenshire Photo © Colin Smith, 23 March 2008 |
Birse Castle, Aberdeenshire Photo © Colin Smith, 23 March 2008 |
Birse Castle, Aberdeenshire Photo © Simon Horne, 30 October 2005 |
Hutton is a small village in the pre-1975 ancient county of Berwickshire, now
an administrative area of the Scottish Borders region of Scotland. It is a traditional,
country village surrounded by farmland.
Shipping Magnate and philanthropist Sir William Burrell owned nearby Hutton
Castle, and died there in 1958.
Birse Castle is a modern stone house built in the Scottish Baronial style of
the 16th century and replaces the origina Gordon stronghold built for the Gordons
of Cluny around 1610. A shelter belt is at its rear.
It is located in the Forest of Birse, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Originally a
three-storey tower house, it was re-built in 1911 into its current L-plan structure,
which is now a category B listed building. The castle is similar in style to
Knock castle, having the same fretwork in the corbels of the turrets. Birse
was the home of caterans and cattle robbers, preying on the Drove Roads between
North and central Scotland.
BIRSE CASTLE, ABERDEENSHIRE.
This fragmentary ruin is situated in the centre of what was once the forest of Birse, but is now a bare and desolate region near the source of the Feugh Water.
The road to it lies over moors and mountains, a distance of about six miles due south from Aboyne. The castle and forest belonged to the Gordons of Clune, by one of whom the tower was probably built about the end of the sixteenth century.
It has been a plain keep in plan, with the addition of a round tower at one angle only. It is thus intermediate between the simple keep and the variety with diagonally opposite wings.
THE CASTELLATED AND DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE OF SCOTLAND BY DAVID MACGIBBON AND THOMAS ROSS, 1889