Fasque House

The name comes from the Gaelic word fasgadh, meaning "safety", or "dwelling place", and for reasons of potential tautology, "house" was never officially added.

In about the 1750s, Sir Alexander Ramsay, 6th Baronet of Balmain, who had been a local Member of Parliament, planted the beech avenues that survive today.

Via his ownership of slave plantations in the West Indies, by the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833 Gladstone was one of the largest slaveholders in Scotland.

[4][5] Following the death of their eldest daughter, Anne, in 1829, it took four years for the Gladstones to move up to the new property, from the now-demolished Seaforth House on the shores of the Mersey.

Their arrival coincided with one of the worst spells of weather ever recorded in Kincardineshire, with many of the trees to the north of the house (which had been planted originally in 1745) being blown down by high winds.

In December 1851, Sir John Gladstone died, passing the house on to his oldest son, Thomas, the eldest brother of William.

Sir Thomas died in 1889, passing the Baronetcy on to his eldest son John, a bachelor soldier, who came home to run the estate with his sister Mary in the 1890s.

Fasque House remained a working home until 1932, when Lady Mary, who had survived her brother John by six years, passed on.

[6] Eventually, the Baronetcy passed through various family lines to end up with the 7th Baronet, Sir William Gladstone, great-grandson of the prime minister, and a former Chief Scout.

In 1978, Sir William's younger brother, the naturalist Peter Gladstone, redecorated Fasque, apparently whitewashing almost every wall surface himself, and opened it to the public for the first time in September of that year, partly capitalising on the then-current popularity of the TV show Upstairs Downstairs.

[9] The house is a large sandstone building, in a symmetrical castellated style, with octagonal towers at the centre and corners of the main facade.