Abergairn Castle

Abergairn Castle stands in Aberdeenshire on a low hill called a kame, one mile north of Ballater. The 17th-century ruin occupies a quiet spot beside the meeting of the River Gairn and the River Dee. Its Gaelic name means ‘the confluence of the Gairn’, pointing to the rivers nearby. The Farquharsons once owned the land and built the castle in 1614, perhaps as a hunting lodge. Today only fragments remain, but the setting keeps the memory of that time. The castle was a small tower house, probably three or four storeys high with an attic garret. Almost all of the walls have fallen, leaving only the basement and a few low stumps. The main tower now rises no higher than four feet, while a round tower to the north-west reaches ten feet. Wind and rain have shaped the stones into rough shapes that hint at the original form. Visitors reach the site along a short path from the road. The surrounding landscape is open moorland with heather and rough grass. From the top of the kame there are wide views over Glen Gairn and the wider Dee valley. The silence and the scattered stones make it easy to picture the castle as it stood four centuries ago.