Fingask Castle

Fingask Castle stands on a ridge 61 metres above the village of Rait, three kilometres north-east of Errol in Perth and Kinross. It looks over the Carse of Gowrie and the Firth of Tay towards Fife. The name comes from the Gaelic for a light-coloured appendage. The site was once a holy stopping-place between Scone Abbey and Falkirk. The Bruces held it from the 15th century, then the Threiplands in the 17th. The castle is listed at Category B and its gardens appear on Scotland’s register of historic designed landscapes. The castle’s past is tied to Scotland’s political and religious upheavals. In 1672 Patrick Threipland bought Fingask, built new gardens and added the nearby Kinnaird estate. His son David fought for the Jacobites at Sheriffmuir in 1715 and the estate was forfeited. Dr Stuart Threipland reclaimed it in 1783 after the repeal of the attainder. Between 1828 and 1840 Sir Patrick Murray Threipland enlarged the house and embellished its fronts. The Threipland baronetcy ended in 1882, and the castle passed through whisky merchant Sir John Henderson Stewart before returning to the family in 1969. Visitors walk through a house shaped by centuries of change. The 1830s west front and the 1840s south front frame views across the Tay. Inside, rooms recall the Threiplands and their staff: a housekeeper, cook, butler and footman once kept the household running. Outside, the gardens and the relocated mercat cross from Perth sit among 30 hectares of parkland. Beyond the estate, the Sidlaw Hills rise and the river valley stretches to the firth.