Airthrey Castle is a historic building and estate which now forms part of the buildings and grounds of the University of Stirling in central Scotland. The 18th-century building with 19th-century additions occupies a beautiful setting in landscaped grounds in the southern edge of the Ochil Hills, above the Forth valley. It is located close to Bridge of Allan, two miles from the historic city of Stirling.
Name There are several suggested origins of the name "Airthrey". One is that it is a corruption of Ard-rhedadie (a high or ascending road, referring to the old road which leads through it to Sheriffmuir). It could alternatively come from the Gaelic "Aithrin" – "a sharp point" or "conflict". This could refer to a battle fought near the site of the Castle in 839, when the Picts were defeated by the Scots under Kenneth McAlpine (standing stones in the park to the east of the Castle are reputed to commemorate the battle). Another, Brythonic rather than Gaelic, version sees the name as related to that of Airdrie in Lanarkshire, and parallel to the modern Welsh ard tref or "high steading or farmstead".
History Early references suggest that in medieval times the lands of Airthrey belonged to the Monks of Cambus, Kenneth & Dunfermline. The name Aithrey appears in a charter of King David I, thought to be from before 1146. In 1370, the estate was granted to Sir John Herice, Keeper of the nearby Stirling Castle. Then the land passed to William Graham, 3rd Lord Graham. He came into ownership of "the lands of Athra", probably in 1472.Logie; A Parish History, Vol.2, by Fergusson, Robert Menzies, Alexander Gardner 1905 He was created Earl of Montrose in 1504 but died at the Battle of Flodden in 1513. The estate remained in the ownership of members of the Clan Graham down to James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose, who fought a famous campaign in support of King Charles I from 1644 to 1650. In 1630 Montrose transferred the Airthrey Estate to a cadet branch of the family, the Grahams of Braco. In 1645, the manor house at Aithrey was burned to the ground by Montrose's implacable foe, the covenanting Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll (1598–1661), reputedly in reprisal for an attack on Argyll's own estate at nearby Castle Campbell by Montrose's followers, en route to victory at the Battle of Kilsyth. The Marquess of Montrose was executed on the orders of the Scottish Parliament in 1650 (during the Commonwealth period). In 1660 the estate passed from the Grahams of Braco to Sir Henry Stirling of Ardoch, and in 1670 his son Sir William Stirling is recorded as being in possession of ‘villa et terris de Athrie’.
The Hopes of Hopetoun
In 1678, the estate was purchased by John Hope of Hopetoun, sheriff and shire commissioner for Linlithgow, and son of James Hope of Hopetoun. The Hope family had profitable interests in lead mines in the Lowther Hills in the Southern Uplands. John Hope died four years later in 1682, drowned on the frigate , which struck a sandbank off Great Yarmouth, carrying a distinguished company which included the Duke of York (the future King James II) and John Churchill (the future Duke of Marlborough). John Hope reputedly gave up his place on the rescue vessel to the Duke of York. He was succeeded by his infant son Charles Hope, 1st Earl of Hopetoun (1681–1742) who after attaining his majority was elevated by Queen Anne to the House of Lords in 1703 with the titles of Viscount Airthrie, Baron Hope and Earl of Hopetoun in the Peerage of Scotland, reputedly in gratitude for his father saving the life of her father King James II. The Hopes may well not have lived at the as yet modest house at Airthrey; they owned extensive property and in 1699 they built the palatial Hopetoun House, 30 miles away at Queensferry.
Dundas of Manour
In 1706 the Airthrey estate was bought by Ralph Dundas of Manour (or Manor), son of John Dundas of Manour (1641–1711). A later legendFamily Romance; Or Episodes in the Domestic Annals of The Aristocracy. Bernard Burke (1853) suggests a canny deal between Dundas and the Earl of Hopetoun. "John Dundas owned a property called Stang Hill Tower which was on the edge of the Earl of Hopetoun's estate. For many years the Earl tried to obtain the tower from John Dundas to add to his estate, but John Dundas refused all offers to let it go, despite the threat of law suits and even bribery. Finally on his death bed he told his son "It is foolish forever to struggle against our rich and powerful neighbour. He will, sooner or later, have our little property; make the best terms with him you can". Soon after John Dundas' death, an exchange highly advantageous to the Dundas of Manour was effected. Stang Hill Tower being given to Lord Hopetoun and the estate of Aithrey which belonged to Lord Hopetoun being made over to Ralph Dundas" (1675–1729). In 1747 John Dundas of Manour (1701–1780) (grandson of the John Dundas in the legend) rebuilt Airthrey House for himself and his family (including his son General Ralph Dundas, 1730–1814). His niece's husband, the writer John Ramsay of Ochtertyre (1736–1814), later described the house he built as "a small, snug house" and says that "conscious of his ignorance of country affairs", John Dundas "contented himself while there with making a kitchen-garden, and having a few acres in grass, without any corn, or adding to his father’s small enclosures. He spent his time … among his books". Ramsay wrote a description of John Dundas. "His candour, meekness, and benevolence, his piety and spotless morals, commanded the esteem of all that knew him; whilst his cheerful sweet disposition, joined to a great fund of anecdote, rendered him an agreeable instructive companion. He unhappily dipped too deep into polemical divinity, which, though it did not abate his charity towards those who were of a different opinion, exposed him in the decline of his faculties to the snares of Popish emissaries."
Aithrey then passed through the hands of three families in succession whose fortunes had been made in India.
The Haldanes
In 1759, "from want of relish for a country life" John Dundas sold "this sweet place" to Captain Robert Haldane of Gleneagles and Plean, an extremely wealthy nabob, and sometime Member of Parliament. "He returned home from the sea service of the East India Company with a great fortune" and was "an arrogant, ambitious, purse-proud man". "He conceived to himself the fashionable modern fancy of beautifying his place in an elegant manner, and considered it as an essential requisite to get quit of these roads which intersected his ground in an ugly and inconvenient manner; and, amongst others, he was not a little hurt with the idea of one passing hard by the door of his house; a situation which, whether really incommodious in itself or not, it is well-known no person chooses to put up with if he can possibly avoid it."‘Airthrey Roads, Captain Haldane’s Magic Roundabout’, KJH Mackay, D Angus, in ‘Forth Naturalist and Historian’ volume 9 Haldane built a new road at his own expense and placed gates on the old public roads.The University of Stirling Conservation Plan, Simpson & Brown Architects, 2009
On Captain Haldane's death the estate passed to his nephew, Captain James Haldane, and in due course, in 1768, to James's infant son Robert Haldane (1764-1842). It was this second Robert Haldane who went on to build a grand new house on the estate in 1791, naming it Airthrey Castle. It was built to a 'castellated villa' design by the pre-eminent Scottish neo-classical architect Robert Adam. Haldane, however, tried to skimp on the architect's fees for supervising the buildings work and Adam retired from the commission before the Castle was actually constructed, leaving the surveying of the building work to the mason, Thomas Russell of Edinburgh. Adam's designs cost £37.6s.2d, and the building work £3,755.13s. Haldane also had the grounds landscaped to designs by Thomas White of Durham, a student of Capability Brown. The works included the beautiful, man-made 23-acre loch (later much used for curling), a hermitage (of which the ruins remain, in Hermitage Wood), and a 4-mile boundary wall. Haldane is said to have advertised locally for a full-time hermit to live in the hermitage, and to have received one serious applicant, who later changed his mind. It is also said that Haldane nearly drowned in Airthrey Loch, but was saved by a man called Sandy Morrison, a shoemaker, to whom in gratitude he gave the use of one of the lodges and a pension for life.
Remarkably, shortly after his vast investment in the house and estate, Robert Haldane had an epiphany and resolved to divest himself of his estates and devote himself to evangelical work. Refused permission by the East India Company to invest all in an ambitious mission in Bengal, A New Description of the Town and Castle of Stirling, 1835 he proceeded instead to build a number of churches and seminaries in Scotland, fund the training of numerous missionaries, lead a theological revival in Geneva, and become the founder of Scottish Congregationalism. He was joined in these worthy activities by his younger brother James Haldane.
The Abercrombies
Robert Haldane sold the Airthrey estate in 1798 to his sister-in-law's uncle, General Sir Robert Abercromby, a distinguished soldier whose military career had been pursued in America (in the War of Independence) and in India, and who had been Governor of Bombay. Coincidentally, his mother was daughter of Ralph Dundas of Manour, the family who had sold the estate to the Haldanes. Abercromby's considerable fortune derived from prize money: he "realized a handsome fortune whilst fighting the battles of the East India Company in Hindostan".
There were springs on the Airthrey estate which emerged from the site of a disused copper mine. The medicinal qualities of the spring water had been known to locals since at least the mid-18th century (indeed, cattle and sheep which drank from a particular drinking trough were said always to arrive at market in much better condition), and in the 1820s Abercromby had the qualities of the water scientifically analysed by the Professor of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow. He confirmed their exceptionally high mineral content and medicinal qualities. On the back of this, Abercromby (by now in his eighties) decided to make the waters available for the public good, and invested in a properly engineered well-head to secure the source. When the scientific report was published, "the Airthrey waters" became famous and people soon came in large numbers to take them. Herein lay the origins of adjoining Bridge of Allan as a spa town: it was transformed from a "sequestered retreat of rural life" to "a favoured resort of elegance and fashion", with the springs one of the highest quality in Great Britain. Report, Chemical and Medical of the Aithrey Mineral Springs, Forest, 1831 ‘A silent, modest, sensible man’, Abercromby died at Airthrey in 1827 aged 87, by when he was the oldest general in the British army. He was succeeded by his nephewGeorge Abercromby, 2nd Baron Abercromby (1770–1843), a lawyer, member of parliament and Lord Lieutenant of Stirlingshire, who was succeeded by George Abercromby, 3rd Baron Abercromby (1800–1852), a soldier, member of parliament and Lord Lieutenant of Clackmannanshire, who was in turn succeeded by his son George Abercromby, 4th Baron Abercromby (1838–1917).
The Grahams