Lossiemouth to Elgin, Scotland '23 Part 4

Lossiemouth, Duffus, Spynie Palace and Elgin

(For Elgin Cathedral, see the 2021 post Elgin and Craigallechie)

A Brief Introduction

Scotland

Moray

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 are described in this and the previous two 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.

Elgin is 40 minutes drive west of Findochty,Lossiemouth is 10 mins north of Elgin

And here is a larger map of the area relevant to this post. For purposes of scale Lossiemouth to Elgin is 5 miles as the crow flies.

The Elgin/Lossiemouth

15-July-2023

Lossiemouth

On Saturday we drove to Lossiemouth to have lunch with Norma and Wilson, who live in nearby Forres. We first met in North Korea in 2013.

We entered Lossiemouth driving up the road towards the harbour. Blasted from the solid rock in the 1830s when Lossiemouth developed a grandiose plan to be the port of Elgin, the harbour was subsequently home to some 80 fishing boats. Fishing now employs only 55 (says Wikipedia) of the town’s 7,000 citizens, the main local source of employment is RAF Lossiemouth just to the south west, while others commute to Elgin.

Lossiemouth Fisheries and Community Museum

Opposite the marina, housed in stores once used for fishing gear, is one of the volunteer-driven local museums that can be found all over the UK - we should make more of these excellent institutions.

Here they have artefacts…

Lossiemouth Museum

and models and photographs, which bring alive the Lossiemouth of the past.

Lossiemouth Museum

Lynne was disappointed electronic problems prevented her from driving the ‘fishing boat’…

Not driving the fishing boat, Lossiemouth Museum

… but enjoyed the archive, reading through several investigations into long ago shipping disasters.

Lynne in the archive, Lossiemouth Museum

At the end of the long, thin museum is a facsimile of Ramsay MacDonald’s study. Born in Lossiemouth in 1866, the illegitimate son of a farm labourer and a housemaid, MacDonald was among the founders of the Labour Party in 1900 and became the UK’s first Labour Prime Minister in 1924. His minority government lasted only months, but he returned in 1929 and from 1931 to 1935, led a coalition government, unsupported by the Labour party – causing his expulsion from the party he helped create.

Ramsay MacDonald's study, Lossiemouth Musuem

The volunteers in such museums always have time to chat.with visitors, and as we were doing that we were joined by Norma and Wilson who had walked past on their way to the Restaurant

The Harbour Lights, Lossiemouth

It was good to see Norma and Wilson again, and conversation flowed freely. I failed to take a photograph of the proceedings, which is becoming a regrettable tradition, so here is a picture of them from 2021.

Lynne (left) with Norma and Wilson outside their home in Forres

The Harbour Lights describes itself as a ‘daytime café;’ it has brunch and lunch menus and is fully licensed. Scotland in general and Moray in particular offer plenty of choices for lunch but a good dinner can be a problem. My crayfish, spinach and mango salad was beautifully balanced and delightfully fresh.

19-July-2023

Duffus

Seven km south-west of Lossiemouth, Duffus, originally New Duffus, is a planned village built on a grid pattern in 1811. The casual visitor is directed to the Church of St Peter half a mile away and is pretty much all that survives of Old Duffus.

The Old Church

The ‘old church,’ is actually an 18th century rebuild of the original, completed in time to be abandoned for the new village and its new church. It is memorable, neither outside…

Duffus old church

…nor in…

Inside Duffus old church

…but one late medieval porch has survived….

Late medieval porch, Duffus old church

… as has the Parish Cross. Historic Scotland describe it as a tall and elegant shaft on its original stepped base. In other words, it is no longer a ‘cross.’

Old Duffus parish cross

A watch house was erected in 1830 to guard against grave robbers. Edinburgh University Medical School had problems obtaining cadavers for dissection and grave robbing was not unknown – though the famous Burke and Hare were murderers not grave robbers. The watch house was built during the ensuing ‘moral panic.’ Grave robbing in remote Duffus was highly unlikely.

Watch house, Duffus churchyard

Gordonstoun School

We had parked beside a narrow road, so on leaving the church we continued in the direction we were facing looking for a turning space. We used the gates of a large house, which on closer inspection turned out to be Gordonstoun School.

Gordonstoun educated the late Prince Philip, who enjoyed it so much he sent all three of his sons there. It was an interesting institution (now probably much changed being coeducational and with a female principal) that required its students to be robust physically as well as intellectually.

Whether the three princes enjoyed it is unknown – royals do not tell – but all Prince Philip’s grandchildren were educated elsewhere.

Duffus Castle

The Mormaers (Earls) of Moray ruled their fiefdom with varying degrees of independence until Oengus of Moray backed the wrong side in a struggle for the Scottish throne and died at the Battle of Strathcaro in 1130. King David I (the man he should have backed) appointed a certain Freskin as his local agent and he built a castle on the boggy plain south-east of Duffus. Scottish Heritage believe it looked like this…

Scottish Heritage plan of Duffus Castle in the 14th century

It has a typical motte and bailey design. Freskin erected a wooden tower on the motte – a man-made mound. The stables, bakehouses and workshops were in the bailey at the base of the motte and protected by a wooden palisade.

It now looks like this….

Duffus Castle

Nothing is known about Freskin except his name, so he was probably Flemish, but the castle was owned by his descendant from 1130 until it was abandoned in 1707.

In 1270 Duffus passed to Sir Reginald le Chen when he married into the Freskin family. The castle was partially destroyed in 1290 and then attacked by Robert the Bruce ten years later, so Sir Reginald decided to build a stone tower.

Militarily his decision was sound - the castle was never attacked again. However building a heavy stone keep on a man-made mound in a boggy plain had predictably long term consequences.

The mound has flattened over time, as the path up from the bailey shows…

Path up the mound, Duffus Castle

…one side of the tower remains largely intact….

One side looks largely intact, Duffus Castle

….while the other is steadily descending the hill.

Part of the tower descending the hill

Duffus eventually had to be abandoned but by then the le Chens had married into the de Moravia family (also Freskin descendants) who were the Earls of Sutherland. In 1707 they had plenty of better castles and the loss of Duffus was inconsequential.

RAF Lossiemouth

The buildings maybe in Lossiemouth, but the main runway stretches almost to Duffus Castle. RAF Lossiemouth is a major base, home to four front line squadrons of Eurofighter Typhoons, two maritime patrol squadrons, an AWACS squadron and a mountain rescue team.

While we were at the castle, Typhoons were taking off and landing (two key skills in all forms of aviation!). They were not doing it quietly.

Typhoon over Duffus Castle

Spynie Palace

The first Bishop of Moray known from written records was Gregoir in the 1120s. He and the other early holders of the office moved between various residences, including Spynie Castle (it was not called a ‘palace’ until the 16th century). It was then a new wooden construction with a surrounding ditch. In 1172 Trinity Church, Spynie became the cathedral and in 1207 Pope Innocent III gave Bishop Bricius de Douglas permission to live permanently in Spynie Castle. In 1222, Holy Trinity, Elgin became the cathedral (we visited that elegant ruin in 2021) but the bishop’s episcopal palace remained at Spynie.

The first stone building appeared in the 13th century and by the late 15th century all the currently existing buildings were in place.

This is Scottish Heritage’s impression of Spynie Castle…

Spynie Castle according to Scottish Heritage

….and this is how it looks from the top of the David Tower.

Spynie Castle: The Little Tower, the South Range and East Gate.
Spot the Loch in the top left hand corner

The Little Tower is on the right, the South Range comes towards the camera from there, and the East Gate is the arched hole in the curtain wall.

While in this photo, the South Range is on the right, the site of the Great Hall slightly left and the Water Tower on the left edge.

The Great Hall and the Water Tower, Spynie Castle

Next to the Water Tower is a small Water Gate. The loch you obligingly spotted once came right up to the castle wall. Even longer ago the loch was five miles long and linked to the sea, which led to the growth of Spynie as a safe harbour. The sea loch silted up long ago and the settlement of Spynie all but disappeared. Drainage in the 19th century further reduced the loch’s size, so it no longer washes the castle wall.

The Water Gate

John de Winchester (bishop 1435–60) moved the main gate to the east wall and fortified it with a portcullis and machicolations.

The West Gate, Spynie Castle

The David Tower, the most impressive part of the building was started by Bishop David Stewart (1462-76) and completed by Bishop William Tulloch (1476-82).

The David Tower, Spynie

It was a tower of many rooms.

Inside the David Tower, Spynie Castle

Elgin

A City not-City

Elgin, with 25,000 inhabitants, is by far the biggest population centre in Moray – at one time Moray was called Elginshire – and is the largest settlement between Inverness and Aberdeen, so Elgin must be a city. Its inhabitants know it - they called their football team Elgin City – and David I made Elgin a Royal Burgh after defeating Oengus of Moray in 1130 (as you already know) and that settles it. Unfortunately, Terms & Conditions Apply, and the small print says Elgin is not a city, and never has been. Many believe this is merely an oversight and will of course be changed, but Inverness, Stirling, Perth and Dunfermline have all been made cities this century, while Elgin has not.

The Town Centre

The centre is largely pedestrianised with a nice fountain (but no water). Behind it, St Giles Church is interesting. It was built 1825-8 in Greek Revival style to a design by Archibald Simpson, who is said to be partly responsible for the ‘character of Aberdeen’. I am not sure I like this design – but that is just me. Between fountain and church is an 1896 statue of Alexander Falconer by John Hutchison. A local physician and philanthropist, Falconer was undoubtedly a worthy citizen.

St Giles, Elgin (and Alexander Falconer)

Not very far away, The Elgin Drummer by Alan Beatie Herriott celebrates the ordinary man and woman. The 18th century town drummer, went round in the morning to wake the workers and the sculpture commemorates a man who held the post for sixty years until his death in 1822.

The Elgin Drummer

Victorian Elgin was built of a lighter, greyer stone than most Scottish towns, making the buildings look more welcoming. Sometimes the architecture becomes almost ‘baronial;’ the Ex-Servicemen’s Club in the High Street looks like it wanted to be a castle, but the lighter stone makes the design seem more fun than pompous.

Elgin Ex-Servicemen's Club

Two or three centuries ago, many of Elgin’s ordinary citizens lived in a ‘close,’ and Braco Close is one of the few that remain. Each close had a gate and a group of cottages, often whitewashed and traditionally thatched with heather - that was theoretically banned in 1735 as a fire risk, but many could not afford alternative roofing.

Braco Close, Elgin

Elgin Museum

Founded in 1836, Elgin Museum claims to be Scotland’s oldest independent museum. Although it has artefacts from all over the world, it understandably concentrates on the local area.

Everything was professionally displayed, and here are three display cases that caught my eye.

This is one of several cases of local fossils.

Fossils, Elgin Museum

We were encouraged to wonder what happened to the Picts.

Pictish carved stone, Elgin Museum

The Picts dominated this area for at least 500 years, and left many artefacts and carved stones, but no written record. The earliest surviving mention of them is from 297CE, their last known king was in the 9th century. At that time there was a general movement of peoples and it is assumed the Picts just assimilated into the mix that would one day become the population of modern Scotland.

More recently in the days when wild salmon were abundant and farmed salmon unknown, fishermen paddled on rivers in coracles to catch them. The River Spey has fast moving water and Spey coracles were designed to be flat-bottomed, stable and easy to manoeuvre. They were in use from the 18th to the early 20th century and Elgin Museum claims to have the very last one.

The last Spey coracle, Elgin Musuem

That completes this brief visit to Elgin – but I will give one final mention to the ruins of Elgin cathedral, though I have already linked to them twice in this post.

This also concludes our 2023 sojourn on the Moray coast. After visiting three years in succession, we will give it a rest in 2024, but we may well return one day.

Scotland 2023

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
Part 6 A Rainy Day in Dumfries (2) Caerlaverock Castle

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

.

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

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
Part 6 A Rainy Day in Dumfries (2) Caerlaverock Castle