Silverbank Caravan Club Site, Banchory, Kincardineshire

A Sunday morning sleep-in and leisurely breakfast was all a treat, although not necessarily planned as such. We spent an hour or more studying our maps and travel guides, agonising yet again over our route south from the furtherest north eastern point of mainland Scotland; we are booked ahead until then. Most of our problems arise from fear or uncertainty about travelling the far north western part of Route 100 with a caravan. Were we travelling with just a car or even a motorhome, none of this would be a problem. We left the paperwork all over the table as we headed out for the middle of the day; something unheard of in our normal compact and necessarily tidy environment.

Yesterday whilst at Craigievar Castle, we had been alerted to the existance of another very interesting looking castle, just eighteen miles away, and so it was to this Castle Fraser we headed now, almost directly north of Banchory.

In the early 1600s, Andrew Fraser of Muchall transformed the home of his ancesters into a magnicficent symbol of wealth, status and European culture. The castle’s great entrance court, soaring towers, relatively wide white spiral staircases and heraldic carvings were designed to impress and they still do today. 

There are stories through the centuries that serve to entertain visitors, stories of eccentricities and hardships that led to the castle where it is today.

One little bonus tucked into a small corner room was an exhibition around a rare antique map found stuffed up a chimney in Aberdeen to stop draughts, which has subsequently undergone extensive restoration work and is now here on display. There was a short DVD showing the processes required for such work, which served not only to create wonder that anyone would recognise the significance of the paper scrap in the first place, but that sense could be made from the incredibly delapidated bits and pieces of the map, in places having been attacked by vermin and insects. The map, measuring 2.2 meters by 1.6 metres, was revealed to be a late 17^th century map of the world produced by the Ditch engraver Gerald Valck and there are only two other known copies in existance.

Castle Fraser was special for being owned at one point by a rare Lady Laird; rare not just for the title but for her lifestyle as well. Now I do appreciate that we read between the lines here and might be taking liberties we ought not, but ….

Elyza Fraser born in 1734, inherited the property when there was no alternative male heir. She lived here with her “close friend” Miss Mary Bristow for forty years, and the two of them worked hard to develop gardens and other fine features of the property. When Mary died, Elyza erected a fine monument in the woods, the touching words which we read for ourselves. When Elyza herself died childless in 1814, it was her sister’s grandson, Charles who inherited the property and title.  

Charles was of course not a Fraser but Mackenzie; he changed his name to Mackenzie-Fraser and so the line was able to continue with this small fiddle.

Frederick Mackenzie Fraser died in 1897, leaving the castle and title of Laird to his great nephew, Thomas Croft Mackenzie Fraser. His widow, Theodora lived here with her adopted daughter and grandchildren until the castle was sold in 1921 to Lord Cowdray.

This Lord Cowdray was an interesting figure, even without the ownership of a now derilect castle. He was Weetman Pearson, born in 1856, who started his working life as an apprentice in his family’s small engineering firm in Bradford, and by 1884 had developed it into the world’s leading engineering contractor. “The Pearson Touch” was legendary as his methods were unorthodox and results specatacular in a business where he literally “moved mountains”.

In 1889 Pearson won a major contract to build a canal to drain Mexico City. This won him the friendship of the Mexican President Diaz and led to the entirely accidental discovery of Mexican oil. Pearson developed the oilfields which made him enormously rich and were a vital supply for Royal Naval warships in World War I. He also pioneered electrical supplies, modern sanitation and tramways and built a railway across Mexico.

Elsewhere Pearson & Co were building the Blackwall Tunnel in London, the East River Tunnel in New York, Dover Harbour, the Sennar Dam in Sudan and the harbour in Vera Cruz. His business interests also included oil, coal, electricity, publishing and aviation.

And back here in Perthshire, he owned a run down castle with no plumbing or electricity.

Pearson also made his mark in the world of politics as Liberal MP for Colchester. Unfortunately, his business kept him so busy he was known as “The Member for Mexico” due to his rare appearances in the House of Commons. In 1917 he became President of the Board of Trade and greatly expanded the Royal Air Force in the First World War.

Lord Cowdray died at the age of seventy two in 1927, leaving an astonishing legacy of engineering works across the world, but unfortunately it was his descendants that were left to apply themselves to  Castle Fraser. 

Actually Sir Weetman Pearson owned the neighbouring estate of Dunecht and bought Castle Fraser for his second son, the Hon. Clive Pearson. Already deeply involved in historic building work, Clive Pearson set about restoring the castle to something resembling its early 17^th century form. 

In 1947 he passed the castle and estate to his daughter Lavinia and her husband, Major Michael Smiley, who took up residence in the restored stable block, which from our distant vantage point today, looked pretty impressive as well. This couple continued the good work of restoration and in 1976 presented the castle and over three hundred acres of surrounding land to the National Trust of Scotland.

We spent some time in the castle, and emerged well after midday. We picnicked in the grounds, well wrapped up against the cold breeze that had come up, and then set off to explore the walled garden and then walk Miss Bristow’s Trail, a delightful walk through the woods. In the gardens we discovered the apricots growing against the wall espalier style were not quite as ripe as they looked and out in the woods, the raspberries were.

En route home, we detoured to the Falls of Feugh in the hope the salmon might be having more success reaching their upriver spawning ground. Alas, they were not; the waters were more fierce than the previous days, a raging brown cauldron, and we feared there might be great schools of salmon languishing in a quiet downstream pool, exhausted and near death.

Back in the caravan the maps and books and scribbled notes awaited us. We had fallen into conversation with a couple of women in a turret room at the Castle, (wo)manning an exhibition for the Scottish Country Women’s Institute and one had travelled in their motorhome around Route 500 on several occasions. Her words raised further questions and later as we sat over our afternoon coffee, we were still confused about the whole business.