Aldourie Castle

In the 1860s, William Fraser-Tytler extended the castle in all directions, including a balustraded round tower, oriel windows, scroll-sided dormers, turrets, corbels, rope-moulded stringing and gunloops.

Lying close to the small, crofting village of Aldourie, it originally consisted of a rectangular main block, with a round tower at the south-west corner, and was extended to the west in 1839 with a two-storey wing.

He commissioned Mackenzie & Matthews to extend the house “in all directions, parading the full repertoire of early 17th-century baronialism, including a balustraded round tower cribbed from Castle Fraser, Grampian, oriel windows, scroll-sided steeply pedimented dormers, candle-snuffered turrets, corbelling, rope-moulded stringcourses and gunloops”.

[8] An extensive Estate Conservation Project started in 2017 to revive the original walled Victorian kitchen garden and surrounding grounds [9] involving renowned landscape architect Tom Stuart Smith with help from students from the National Trust for Scotland.

[10] Concurrently, extensive architectural additions to the Castle and Estate, including a new Boathouse, as well as the sensitive repair of the historic Steadings building have been led by Ptolemy Dean Architects.