Fyvie Castle

OVERVIEW

A great tower house near Turriff in Aberdeenshire, begun in the thirteenth century and enlarged by five families whose names are on its five towers; the National Trust for Scotland has had it since 1984 with its collections and its stories, which its guides tell. The Trust's own page lists the traditions.

HISTORY

Lilias Drummond, wife of Alexander Seton, died in 1601 aged about thirty after bearing five daughters and no son; within months Seton remarried, and the tradition is that on the wedding night her name was found cut, upside down and from outside, into the sill of the bedroom window on the fourth floor, where it is shown. Thomas the Rhymer's curse on the 'weeping stones' — three stones taken from a chapel, one of which is kept in the Charter Room — is said to have kept the eldest sons of Fyvie from inheriting. In the 1920s a woman's skeleton was found behind a wall during works; when it was buried, reports of a Grey Lady began, and the laird had it walled up again.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

The Green Lady, taken to be Lilias, on the stairs and in the gallery, seen by staff and guests and trailed by the smell of roses; the Grey Lady; a sealed chamber under the Charter Room that no laird may open. Most Haunted filmed here. The Trust keeps the stories as part of the house.

VISITING

National Trust for Scotland; seasonal opening, ticketed, guided tours.