Braemar Castle

During the 11th century AD a fortification known as Kindrochit Castle stood on a site nearby, its position chosen for the strategic river crossings of the Grampian Mounth that carried travellers between the Highlands and lowland Scotland. From the Late Middle Ages the site anchored a stronghold of the Earls of Mar, and by the time that older building fell out of use, the location itself had already proven far more durable than any single structure raised on it.

In 1628 John Erskine, Earl of Mar, replaced the old stronghold with the castle that still stands today, raising it as a hunting lodge for his family while also asserting authority over the increasingly powerful Farquharsons nearby. The star-shaped curtain wall of six sharp-angled salients and the turreted central tower built at this time were as much a display of dominance as a defensive measure, a deliberate answer to a rival clan's rise.

That rivalry turned violent in 1689, when John Farquharson, known as the Black Colonel of Inverey, attacked and burned the castle during the Jacobite rising rather than allow government troops to garrison it there. The Earl of Mar's own leadership of the 1715 Jacobite rising brought a further consequence: in 1716 the castle and its lands were forfeited to the Crown, leaving the burned shell in Crown hands for decades to come.

The ruined castle was bought by John Farquharson, 9th Laird of Invercauld, but stood empty until 1748, when it was leased to the government at a fee of £14 a year and rebuilt under John Adam, Master Mason to the Board of Ordnance, to serve as a garrison for Hanoverian troops. Between 1760 and 1806 the wider estate was given over to forestry on an extraordinary scale, with James Farquharson of Invercauld planting some sixteen million fir trees and two million larch.

The military garrison was withdrawn in 1831 and the castle returned to the Farquharson clan, beginning a period of restoration to make it a family home once again under the 12th Laird of Invercauld. It was in this era that Queen Victoria was entertained at the castle during her attendance at the Braemar Gatherings held in its grounds, a royal visit that marked the building's transformation from barracks back into a residence of standing.

Since 2006 the castle has been leased to the local community and run by the charity Braemar Community Ltd, staffed by local volunteers who have carried out an ambitious restoration programme. It reopened to the public in 2008, closing a cycle that began with a private hunting lodge and a Crown garrison and ended with a building held, for the first time, in trust for the village around it.