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Newton Castle
"In a lofty position on high ground above the town, and overlooking the wide
vale of Strathmore, this handsome old fortalice was once the seat of the lords of the barony
of Blairgowrie." So begins Nigel Tranter's account of this fortified home, which
seems to date from the mid 1500's although there is no way of knowing just how old or when
the original construction was started.
The castle is composed of three towers joined to form a shape like the letter
"Z." In the picture the towers can be seen beginning on the left with the round tower.
the second tower or middle tower is a rectangle. The third is a square tower seen at the
right side of the picture and contains a circular stone staircase.
Later additions, including the present library at the north side of the house,
have in no way spoiled the look and feel of the old tower house.
The main bedroom (above the dining room) has unusual curved doors. A four poster bed of early 19th century design is a feature of this room. On the top story the three bedrooms interconnect, so that these are occupied always by members of the family. THE DRUMMONDS In the earliest days the house would have been considered a fortified farmstead or fortalice, which led to its designation over many years as a Castle. It is known that about 1550, a George Drummond purchased the lands of "Newton Blair." That George Drummond was killed by a group from Drumlochy on 3rd June 1554. The early owners of the Castle had the windows barred up to the first floor and the sockets for those bars can be seen today in some of the windows. There is a legend that Cromwell burned an earlier castle that stood on this spot, but the present castle is the same as other houses built in the half century before his time. Cromwell no doubt may have set the castle on fire, but it survived the protector.
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THE GRAHAMS After the Drummonds, the next family to live at Newton Castle were the Grahams of Balgowan. A famous member of the family believed to have been born at the castle in 1748 was Thomas Graham, later ennobled as Lord Lynedoch, who fought with Wellington in the Peninsular and elsewhere. He became one of Wellington's most famed generals and was the "Victor of Bares". THE MACPHERSONS Thomas Graham's tutor for three or four years in the 1760's was James "Ossian" Macpherson, who caused a literary furor with the Ossianic lays, which he claimed to have discovered in the Highlands. It was James's knowledge of Newton Castle and its estates which led to their purchase by his first cousin, Colonel Allan Macpherson, in 1787-88. The Macpherson family have owned the castle since then. THE WIDOW'S GHOST One of Newton Castle's two ghosts is that of the murdered George Drummond's widow. She stands forever in the drawing-room window above the old front door - since legend relates that when the sons of the Laird of Drumlochy came years after the murders to try to heal the breach between the feuding families, and to woo the daughter of the house, the widow waved her husband's bloodstained shirt from the window and ordered her surviving sons to harry the visitors over the hill. "The lady with the red duster", seen by visitors standing at the window, is Drummond's widow, waving still his stained "sark". THE GREEN LADY The second of the castle's ghosts is reputed to have been a Drummond daughter, who fell in love with a young man named Ronald, but he would not return her love. .'r "nurse of 90 years" persuaded her to sit all night on the Corbie Stane in the river Eicht, with her eyes "steekit" and leaves of birch and rowan in her hands. when she woke she was clothed in "witchin claith 0' green". Ronald was duly 'witched and the pair were wed. However, the fairies, whose "claith" the bride wore, claimed her on the wedding night. She died and they took her spirit. She is said to be buried on the hill of Knockie and at Hallowe'en she comes down and climbs the stair to her bedroom at the top of the round tower, seeking her lost lover. FAMILY HOME Newton Castle has been the home of the Proprietors of the Barony of Blairgowne for more
than four centuries. The Macpherson family's coat of arms can be seen above the present
front door, and upon the stonework of the garden gate. It is also above the entrance to the
family graveyard which lies beside the old Hill Church (once the parish church of
Blairgowne) in the Kirk Wynd.
A fine south-facing wall backs the old kitchen-garden of the house. The garden itself is mostly grassed and blends naturally with the woods behind and fields below. A century old Wellingtonia or Redwood tree stands beside the castle and now overtops it. An oak tree planted to commemorate King George V's coronation grows on the far side of the former tennis court. In the small wood on the eastern side of the house is the well from which the house's water came in earlier days. It is still full of clear, cold hill water.
Taken from notes of Sir William Macpherson of Cluny, with some additions by Mhuirich. |
