Terpersie Castle, Aberdeenshire
Photo © Anne Burgess, 9 September 2007
Terpersie Castle, Aberdeenshire
Photo © Richard Paxman, 9 July 2007
Terpersie Castle, Aberdeenshire Photo © Anne Burgess, 9 September 2007 |
Terpersie Castle, Aberdeenshire Photo © Richard Paxman, 9 July 2007 |
Terpersie is a very attractive small Z-plan castle, hidden away behind a farm in a side glen on the south side of the Correen Hills. It was restored from an almost complete ruin within the last 20 years or so. The last Gordon of Terpersie was "out" during the rebellion of 1745, and he hid in the Correen Hills above his house after the defeat at Culloden until eventually he was caught by the searching government troops. They did not at first realise who they had caught, thinking him just a vagrant, until he was brought down to Terpersie where his children on seeing him ran towards him with cries of "Daddy Daddy"!! He was taken to Carlisle and hung!
It was formerly, and aptly, known as Dalpersie, 'valley in the moors'. The castle belonged to a branch of Clan Gordon, and its occupants palyed a prominent part in many a battle of the sixteenth century. Old prints show that as well as the two circular towers with their unusually-shaped roofs, there was a rectangular wing to the east. Much of the stone from this wing was used to build the farm steading next door.
TERPERSIE, ABERDEENSHIRE.
Although diminutive in size, this is an interesting house, as being one of the simplest and most primitive examples of the Z plan the design founded on the old keep plan, with round towers added at two of the diagonally opposite angles of the main block. The central building is only 28 feet by 18 feet over the walls, and the towers are about 18 feet in diameter, including the walls. The towers have the shot-holes arranged so as to command each face of the house, and in the upper floors there are also numerous shot-holes looking out in all directions.
These shot-holes are intended for musketry only, and have not the deep externally splayed ingoings of the earlier forms of embrasures for guns, the splay being entirely in the inner ingoing, with only a small round hole visible on the outside. The original outer door was on the east side, entering directly into the vaulted cellar occupying the basement. Crossing this, the door to the south-west tower is reached, from the ingoing of which a straight stair in the thickness of the wall leads to the hall on the first floor. Three strong doors have thus to be passed from the entrance on the ground floor before the stair to the hall is reached. Perhaps the hall had also a direct external entrance on the first floor, by the doorway which now leads to it from the newer staircase. There is a high window to the hall formed over the top of the staircase from the ground floor. The cellars in the towers have domed vaults. The hall is 21 feet by 13 feet, and gives access to two rooms in the towers, which may have been private rooms or bedrooms. They are irregular hexagons internally, and each of them has a garde-robe and fireplace. A turret corbelled out in the angle of the south-west tower conducts to the upper floor, which is similarly arranged.
Terpersie is situated in a quiet secluded glen not far from Alford. It belonged to a branch of the Gordons of Lesmoir, and was built, according to the label under one of the loops of the stair to the hall, in 1561. The castle was thus probably built by William Gordon, who is recorded to have taken part in the battles of Corrichie, in 1563, and Tillyangus, in 1573. The label containing the date has the appearance of being fixed with screw-nails, the whole however, including the nail-heads, being carved in the stone. The lowest corbel of the angle staircase contains the letter G, for Gordon, and the boar's head of the family arms is carved over the first-floor window. At a later date the wing to the east was added, so as to provide a separate kitchen and a better staircase close to the door. It would also, of course, give additional accommodation in the upper floors, which are now in sad dilapidation. The house was formerly surrounded by a moat, which, being on haugh ground close to the Esset Burn, would be easily filled with water.
Reference
The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland by David Macgibbon and Thomas Ross, 1889