Castle Fraser, Aberdeenshire - A very beautiful castle with amazing gardens

We were in Aberdeenshire in Scotland this weekend, seeing friends. On sunday, we stopped in at Castle Fraser, before driving back to Edinburgh. Its not a castle we have been visited before.

The current castle is a beautiful building dating from the 16th century - so around 450 years old. Its quite odd inside, in that all the rooms are fairly small, and not overly grand. In appearance they look more like they are from the Georgian to Victorian eras (~1750 - 1880).

Above is one of the typical rooms. As can be seen its not that big, and although nicely furnished and decorated - it could easily be from a period townhouse in Edinburgh. You would not immediately think castle when looking at it.

The castle was owned by the Fraser family, Laird's of Fraser, hence the name. It is now in the care of the National Trust for Scotland, who maintain and operate the castle.

The library type room above was quite interesting and told the story of one of the family who had fought in the Napoleonic wars. The room contained some of his memorabilia. This included two bullets that he was shot with, during the war - one in the head, along with the hat he was wearing at the time. The other bullet went through his knee, and he lost his leg as a result !

And just to prove it, his wooden leg is on display in the small room to the side !

The castle was modernised in the late 18th century, by Elyza Fraser, the only Lady Laird of the Castle. She was a very interesting and clearly very intelligent character. She embraced a lot of the new ideas that came along with the Scottish Enlightenment at the time, transforming the castle and the fortunes of the estate - quite impressive.

Above is the obligatory dead animal collection ! This includes two of their pet dogs, who they had stuffed as they could not bear to part with them when they died. You can see one at the bottom left in the blue case, and the head of the other one to the right of the centre at the bottom beside the white radiator. The dogs creeped out our daughter !

The ornamental gardens were quite lovely - the hedges and cone shaped trees were very pretty.

The castle tour takes you all the way up to the roof, from which you get fine views out across the land surrounding the castle.

It was nice to see the St Andrews Cross, the flag of Scotland, blowing in the wind at the top.

The room above was about the largest room - the main hall. This was added onto the castle by the Lady Laird. It was quite interesting as you could see how they had built it by cutting through existing walls, and the like when it was added on as an extra layer to the front of the castle ! It was like they had done 90% of the work, and then didnt fill in the remaining holes to complete the job ! Thats Scottish builders for you !

It certainly was a lovely place to visit, with the tour telling the story of the castle and the family.

Above is the locking mechanism from a strong box that was on display in the main hall - I love the workmanship on this.

The period dressing in the rooms was quite nice to see.

I'm glad we made the detour to visit it. There are quite few castles in that area, and this is about the only one I've seen there, so it was great to visit something new.

I really liked the little display above, and particularly the exposed carvings on the wall. The one on the left is dated 1746, with the letters WI and FY - I'm not sure what they represent, but its lovely to see them preserved after all these years.

It certainly was a lovely castle to visit. I was more impressed with the architecture and structure itself, as opposed to the internals, however, the stories of the Fraser family were also quite cool. Well worth the visit !