Fordyce Castle

Fordyce Castle, Aberdeenshire Photo © Anne Burgess, 2 July 2007

Fordyce Castle, Aberdeenshire Photo © Colin Smith, August 1992

Fordyce is a village in Aberdeenshire, Scotland that is slightly inland from the point where the Burn of Fordyce meets the sea between Cullen and Portsoy. It has existed since at least the 13th century.

The castle was built in 1592 by local laird and wealthy Aberdeen merchant Thomas Menzies of Durn, and extended in the late 17th century. A Scottish Tourist Board plaque outside implies that it is available for self-catering holiday lets.

FORDYCE CASTLE, BANFFSHIRE.

A small sixteenth-century tower, about two and a half miles south-west of Portsoy. It was erected by Thomas Menzies, a citizen of Aberdeen, whose family long held the provostship of that town. The date of erection, as the inscription bears, is 1592. The structure is still inhabited, and the rooms remain practically unaltered since that time. It consists of a three-story tower with wing at one corner, which, as usual, contains the entrance door and staircase to the first floor, above which a small turret staircase corbelled out in the re-entering angle leads to the upper rooms in the tower or wing. The top story has the usual angle turrets. At a later time a wing containing a separate house has been added at one end.

Reference

The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland by David Macgibbon and Thomas Ross 1889