Corgarff Castle, Cockbridge, Strathdon, Aberdeenshire, Scottish Highlands
The castle is thought to have been built in about 1550 by John Forbes of Towie. The Forbes family were supporters of the cause of the future James VI in the years following the imprisonment of Mary Queen of Scots in England. The Gordon family from Auchindoun near Dufftown were supporters of the claim of Mary to the Scottish throne. This led to feuding between the two clans, and in November 1571 Adam Gordon of Auchindoun tried to capture Corgarff Castle. The Forbes menfolk were absent, but John Forbes' wife, Margaret, refused to surrender the castle and shot one of Gordon's men through the knee with a pistol. In response Adam Gordon piled kindling against the castle and burned it down, killing all within the castle except for Margaret Forbes who fled to Ireland where she give birth to John' son, Alexander. The castle is believed to be haunted. In early 1746, Jacobite forces were using Corgarff Castle as an arms store after their retreat from Derby. A forced march by 300 Government foot soldiers and 100 dragoons through the snow from Aberdeen caught the Jacobites off guard. The Government repurchased it in 1827, this time as a base designed specifically to tackle whisky smuggling and illegal distillation in the area. From the army's final departure in 1831, the castle went into a steady decline. Its last residents were the Ross sisters, known locally as the Castle Ladies, and they left during the First World War. By 1947, when the surrounding Delnadamph estate was bought by Sir Edmund and Lady Stockdale, the castle was an empty ruin, used only for occasional shooting lunches within the curtain walls. With financial assistance from the Stockdales, Corgarff Castle passed into State care in 1961 and has in recent years been wonderfully restored by Historic Scotland as it would have been in the years following the 1748 conversion. In 1979, the Stockdale family gave the ownership of the castle to the Lonach Highland Friendly society
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Photo credit: © Travel Scotland - Paul White / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
Keywords: 1745, bg, britain, british, castle, corgarff, highlands, hilly, historical, history, jacobite, landscape, monument, rebellions, remote, scenery, scenic, scotland, scottish, strathdon, uk, view
