The history of the castle
Looking at the elegant proportions and pink limewash of Craigievar Castle today, it’s hard to imagine it as four storeys of rough stone, standing grey and forbidding among a clutter of defensive walls and outbuildings. But that’s how it began life, back in the 1500s.
Since then, two major periods of building work have made Craigievar into the ‘fairytale’ tower house, admired by people all over the world today.
From four storeys to seven
The first transformation started in 1610, when William Forbes of Corse bought the castle and its lands from the Mortimer family. William (nicknamed ‘Danzig Willie’) was a wealthy merchant who had made a fortune from timber and trade around the Baltic Sea. He set about improving Craigievar.
His architect-builders – thought to be the Bel family – extended it upwards with three new storeys, adding space, light and flamboyance to the original tower house.
They married the old and new sections with a corbel running round the entire building, complete with decorative cannons and carved gargoyles.
Most flamboyant of all is the roofline, with its exuberance of turrets, viewing platforms, balusters and chimneys.
This playfulness is balanced by the orderly symmetry in the arrangement of the windows and mouldings in the upper floors; it’s clever architecture.
Another transformative aspect of Danzig Willie’s overhaul was the use of harling, which he was advised to apply in order to weatherproof the building. This first harling was probably a creamy, off-white colour, perhaps with a gentle tinge of pink from the use of local sand.
The interior transformed
There were changes inside the castle too, notably the installation of the grand plaster ceilings. Before Danzig Willie’s building project, the Great Hall and other rooms may have had painted wooden beamed ceilings, like those you can see today at nearby Crathes Castle, which is also cared for by the National Trust for Scotland.
Read more about the painted ceilings at Crathes
But Danzig Willie and his builders wanted something more modern – ornate moulded plaster ceilings, like those recently installed at Kellie Castle in Fife and Glamis Castle in Aberdeenshire. They commissioned a team of plasterers from Bromley-by-Bow, near London, who had trained in Italy and had already created the ceilings at Kellie, Glamis and House of the Binns.
Their work at Craigievar is extraordinary – look up and you’ll see figures from the Bible and Classical mythology, winged cherubs, various coats of arms, and a profusion of geometrical patterns.
Did you know?
The back-to-front D in ‘David’ at Craigievar also appears in the ceilings at Kellie Castle and Glamis Castle because the plasterers reused their moulds.
Among the coats of arms is the one belonging to Danzig Willie himself, with three muzzled bears and the initials ‘MWF’. The M stands for ‘Master’, possibly referring to his shipping connections.
These connections can also be seen in the room we now call the Ladies’ Withdrawing Room. Completed in 1625, perhaps as Danzig’s study, it’s reminiscent of a ship’s cabin.
The timber panelling in the Withdrawing Room was soaked in the same wood preservative (ox blood) as they used in ships at the time – hence its redness.
Craigievar turns pink
The second great construction project at Craigievar took place in the 1820s. Unlike the first project, it wasn’t so much an extension as a salvation.
The work was commissioned by Sir John Forbes, who, like Danzig Willie, was a second son. Not expecting to inherit, he had left Scotland as a young man for India, where he served as a judge. However, his elder brother, Sir Arthur, died not only childless but heavily in debt. Returning to Craigievar, Sir John found leaking roofs, damaged ceilings and widespread disrepair.
Fortunately for the castle, Sir John Forbes was not in debt – far from it – and in 1824 he instructed Aberdeen architect John Smith to report on the building and what should be done about it. Looking at Craigievar today, it seems inevitable that anyone would want to restore and conserve it. However, that certainly wasn’t a given in the 19th century; just think of the number of castle ruins around Scotland.
The architect recommended that Sir John repair the castle urgently, replace the roof and reharl the walls – not in the off-white colour used previously, but pink to match the local granite around the castle. Sir John agreed to all his recommendations, and ochre and ‘Spanish brown’ pigments were added to the lime in the harling.
The 1820s project also resulted in windows being enlarged to let in more light and provide better views. And the long gallery on the top floor, where the family would have exercised in poor weather and entertained guests, was transformed into a much plainer servants’ floor, with partitioned areas for bedrooms, laundry and ironing.
Sir John had some of the remaining courtyard walls removed (others had already been dismantled in the 18th century), so that the tower rose cleanly out of the surrounding lawns, as it does now.
A watercolour painted by James Giles in 1840 shows Craigievar looking very similar to how it looks today – albeit yellower. Of the 67 castles of Aberdeenshire painted by Giles, Craigievar is one of only two that look the same.
Effects of time and taste
The above two projects were not the only building changes at Craigievar over the centuries. Like any surviving castle, it’s a patchwork of different owners’ tastes, fluctuating fortunes, and the fashions and changing technologies of each age. For example, a number of windows were blocked up in the 1770s, perhaps to avoid window taxes; rooms were repurposed; and plumbing additions over time included the conversion of a box bed into a box bath!
Most recently, the National Trust for Scotland has carried out a major project in the 2020s to protect the castle from the effects of time, weather and climate change, ensuring that visitors can still enjoy this amazing castle.
The pictures on this page will give you some idea of what makes Craigievar (and the masons and other craftspeople who have worked on it) so special ... but there’s nothing like seeing it for yourself!
Read more about Craigievar Castle
Pink again: Craigievar Castle reopens
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