Pitmedden Gardens and Haddo House: Scotland '23 Part 3

A Restored Renaissance Garden and the Seat of the Earls of Aberdeen

A Brief Introduction

Scotland

Aberdeenshire

After driving north from Falkirk, we spent a week, as we did last year, in a borrowed cottage (thank you Jenny and Bob) in the delightful fishing village of Findochty, beside the Moray Firth. For no obvious reason Findochty is pronounced ‘Finechty.’ Our ‘outings,’ to Banff & Macduff, Pitmedden & Haddo House (near Oldmeldrum) and Lossiemouth & Elgin will be described in this and the previous and subsequent posts. The rest of the time we pottered happily about Findochty and Buckie. Some of that pottering fed into improvements (and one enlargement) of last year's Findochty, Portknockie and Cullen post.

Findochty to Oldmeldrum is just over 40 miles and takes and hour

Findochty to Oldmeldrum

After a leisurely breakfast we set out from Findochty and headed along the cost to Cullen where we crossed from Moray into Aberdeenshire and continued to Portsoy.

Moray and Aberdeen
Findochty is on the coast between Buckie and Cullen

Here we turned south-west on minor roads. Although only a quarter the size of the Highland District, Aberdeenshire is Scotland third largest council district, even without the city of Aberdeen which is a district in its own right. The Aberdeenshire's coast is studded with fishing ports, some tiny some substantial, the western side is mountainous and includes much of the Cairngorms National Park while the rest is rural. We drove along quiet roads traversing gently undulating farmland past fields of cereals and lush green pastures grazed by contented cows.

Aberdeenshire

We encountered a few villages, the occasional distillery and the small town of Turriff with its complicated one-way system, where we turned south toward Oldmeldrum.

Oldmeldrum (pop: 3,000) was important enough in 1672, to be made a Burgh of Barony. ‘Meldrum’ come from the Gaelic for a bald hill, the ‘old’ implies the existence of a Newmeldrum, though there has never been one.

The village of Pitmedden is five miles east of Oldmeldrum and we made our way to Pitmedden Gardens on the northern edge of the village.

Pitmedden Gardens

Sir Alexander Seton and his wife, Dame Margaret Lauder, established a house and garden here in 1675. The garden was noted for its geometric parterres, which, according to Wikipedia, are now the largest surviving parterres,, in Scotland. In the next paragraph the reader is informed that the house and garden was destroyed by a fire in 1807.

The parterres were restored by the National Trust for Scotland between 1951 and 1961. The rectangular garden has an upper and lower terrace and is set out, as Chinese Gardens often are, with its boundaries running (almost) precisely north, south, east and west. The parterres are on the Lower Terrace, the entrance is on the Upper Terrace, but the avenue of Yews almost demands you walk straight across the Upper Terrace and look down.

The Lower Terrace

The parterres are large and the Lower Terrace is not far below. The view would be better from a drone, but as I do not have one, here is a satellite picture (thank you Bing Maps).

Pitmedden Gardens from Bing maps

The colours are less dramatic from ground level…

The two northern parterres

…though the avenue continuing through from the Upper Terrace looks better from the ground.

The avenue through the Lower Terrace

The visitor can wander at will along the paths through the parterres and it is here the colours are found, nestled inside the lines of the hedge.

The south eastern parterre

As the original designs are lost, the restorers based three parterres on the 1647 plans for the garden of Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, while the fourth section is a memorial to the Seton Family.

Inside a parterre

The strict formality of the geometric patterns may not be to everybody’s taste, but it is to mine. Flowers are not natural, they were bred to be the way they are, so gardeners are free to make use of them in the most artificial of patterns. The result is so….and it seems a pathetic little word…tidy, but I like tidiness, even if I often fail to achieve it in my own life. We saw a patchwork style of tidiness in the Madeira Botanical Gardens in April, so I am clearly not on my own with this.

Around the boundaries of the Lower Terrace are border flowerbeds with drifts of colourful plants for those less geometrically inclined.

One of the border flower beds

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The Orchard

A gate to the south of the parterres leads into an orchard of plum trees. There are several dozen trees, all looking much the same, though the planting diagram differentiates them into plums, damsons, greengages and a couple more I had never heard of – and should have written down at the time. Colin W kindly reminds me that one unremembered plum relatives was the Bullace. For his description of a bullace, see comments below.

Plum Trees, Pitmedden

The Upper Terrace

Having rushed through the Upper terrace on arrival, we returned for a closer look. Here, instead of recreating historical designs, they are re-imaging the garden for the modern world.

Upper Terrace, Pitmedden Gardens

The implementation will be naturalistic and sustainable (and I hope ‘sustainable’ is more than just a buzz word). Within the modern design the plantings are intended to recreate the colour palate of 17th century textiles, while mown s-shaped walkways echo 17th century architecture.

Upper Terrace, Pitmedden Gardens\

I expect many people will like this new garden, but my (weird?) preference remains for the strict geometric shapes below.

Pitmedden Gardens, Upper Terrace

Pitmedden Museum of Farming Life

The barn and farmhouse on the upper terrace contain a Museum of Farming Life.

Getting turnip seeds into the ground was important here in the 19th century. The museum has an old, and an even older way of doing it. Both could be pulled by a single horse, which given the width and weight of the blue painted machine, front of picture, seems remarkable.

Turnip drills, Pitmedden

There is, of course, the obligatory threshing machine, though they call this a ‘barn mill.’ Instead of being dragged from farm to farm by a traction engine, this one was fixed with a grain lift above.

Barn Mill, Pitmedden

Advancing into the 20th century, there is a Fordson tractor from the 1940s. My memory says that tractors were still this size in my childhood (late 50s/early 60s). I now sometimes find myself staring in wonder at the behemoths working our local fields or driving down the main street of the village. The Ford Motor Company (US) manufactured tractors under the Fordson name from 1917 to 1928, then stopped making tractors for a decade. The Ford Motor Company (UK) continued to develop and manufacture Fordson tractors until 1964. The N series, in the photograph, was produced in Dagenham between 1939 and 1952.

Fordson N Series Tractor, Pitmedden

We moved from the barn to the farmhouse. I do not have a date for either the building or the furnishing, but there is a cosy farm parlour….

Cosy parlour, Pitmedden

…. a kitchen with none of the conveniences we take for granted….

Kitchen, Pitmedden

….and a bedroom with accommodation for the two smallest children, though these probably come from different times. There is also a tiny sowing machine in the mantlepiece.

Bedroom, Pitmedden

It was now well past lunchtime, so we had a snack and a cup of tea in the Pitmedden café and then set off for...,

Tarves and the Tolquhon Tomb

The village of Tarves is some 3 miles north of Pitmedden. Tolquhon Castle is half way between the villages, though not on the road.

Most of the now ruined castle was built by William Forbes, 7th Laird of Tolquhon between 1584 and 1589. He died in 1596, and his remains, and those of his wife Elizabeth Gorden are interred in the Tolquhon Altar Tomb.

Despite some sources saying otherwise, the tomb is not in Tolquhon Castle but at St. Englat’s Parish Kirk in Tarves. Ignoring the castle, we drove straight to Tarves, parked in the small square and walked to the Parish Kirk. The previous kirk having become unsafe, a new kirk was built in 1798. It stands beside the remains of its predecessor, and the Tolquhon Tomb is incorporated into a surviving wall of the old church, beneath an unlovely Perspex porch erected by Historic Scotland.

The Tolquhon Tomb, Tarves

The Tomb, built by Thomas Leper in 1589 perhaps to William Forbes design, is an arched altar tomb with mixed gothic and Renaissance motifs. That pedimented setting and classical surround probably date from 1798. Small figure of Forbes and his wife stand at either end of the arch apparently staring sadly across the huge empty space between them.

Around 60 recumbent tombstones populate the old church floor, Four, early and well carved, 16th/17th century tombstones have been propped up against the wall.

Four tombstones, Tarves

Haddo House

Haddo House is 3 miles north of Tarves, down the end of a very long drive - I think, it is hard to tell where the public road ended and the drive began.

The Haddo branch of the Gordons descend from John Gordon, who fought as a Royalist against the Covenanters in the Civil War and was created Baronet in 1642. The Third Baronet, George Gordon was a noted lawyer who became Chancellor of Scotland and was created Earl of Aberdeen in 1682.

Work on Haddo House started under the Third Earl in 1732.

Haddo House - this is just the gatehouse

Like Duff House in Banff and half a dozen more major houses in Scotland. Haddo House was designed by William Adam in Georgian Palladian style.

Haddo House - just the central block

George Hamilton Gordon
Photo: John Jabez Edwin Mayal
National Portrait Gallery (Pub Dom)

The 4th Earl, George Hamilton-Gordon (the Hamilton came from his wife’s family) had a career as a diplomat and parliamentarian and was Prime Minister from 1852 to 1855. He reluctantly led Great Britain into the Crimean War.

The 7th Earl was upgraded to 1st Marquess in 1916. Since 2020, the title has been held by the 8th Marquess, another George Gordon - aristocrats tend to be economical with names. He does not live in Haddo House, which was given to the National trust for Scotland in 1979.

The exterior might be Georgian, but the interior had a late Victorian makeover. The National Trust usual permits photography inside their buildings, but they do not own the content of Haddo House, and their owners take a different view.

Haddo House, showing the central section and both wings

We took the guided tour which showed us the furniture, the family portraits and James Giles’ 85 paintings of Aberdeenshire castles.

We also saw the table, menu and place cards from a dinner party hosted by the first Marquess in 1884. Among those attending were William Gladstone, then in the second of his four terms as Prime Minister, his wife Catherine, his daughter, educationist Helen Gladstone, and future Prime Minister, Archibald Primrose.

Dinner at Haddo House. 1884

I can show you a picture of that. Dinner in Haddo House 1884 was painted by Alfred Edward Emslie and is in the National Portrait Gallery – though we missed it when we visited in November 2023. The picture is in the public domain.

Back to Findochty

We had not gone far from Haddo House when we were hit by a tremendous downpour, a storm that has you creeping along at 15 mph while wondering if the rain drops hammering on the car roof will actually dent it. Fortunately, such force cannot last for long and we drove of the way back in watery sunshine as a steamy mist rose from the roads.

Scotland 2023 (so far)

Part 1 Falkirk
Part 2 Banff and Macduff
Part 3 Pitmedden Gardens and Haddo House
Part 4 Lossiemouth to Elgin 
Part 5 A Rainy Day in Dumfries (1) Robert Burns