Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Searching for Cleish Castle

We headed to Cleish after leaving MacDuff Castle, and drove all through all the hills and valleys there, but never found this castle!! I guess, someday, we will have to return to this little village and search some more. It was getting late in the evening, and we could not find anyone to ask about this castle, so we headed on back to our cottage in Glasgow. This was a disappointment as it does sound like this castle does exist. Below are numerous pictures of the area, which is quite a beautiful area of Scotland. I had hoped that we would have time on another day to get over to Cleish and ask the locals, but our schedule just didn't allow for more time there. 



http://www.geocities.ws/clancolville/castle.html

Cleish Castle, Kinross, Scotland is a lofty five story ashlar-faced tower standing on the northern slopes of the Cleish Hills. The main block measures 12m by 9m and has a wing measuring 6.2m by 8.5m the end walls of which rise in a series of external offsets. A reset dormer pediment has the initials of Robert Colville and Beatrix Haldane with the date of 1600 to which may be attributed much of the building, but the massively built two lowest levels of the main block with rounded angles are at least a century earlier. The molded doorway, now closed, is the re-entrant angle leading into the base of a spiral staircase, now removed, between the main block and the wing. A turret stair over the angle served the top two stories. The existing entrance at hall level reached by a forestair and most of the present windows date from after the total restoration of the castle from ruin in the 1840’s. The main block basement vault was then removed or had already fallen. To the south was a court of which was the blocked entrance survives inside a modern outbuilding. 




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleish_Castle

Cleish Castle is a 16th-century tower house in Kinross-shire, Scotland. It is sited 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) south-west of Kinross and 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) west of the hamlet of Cleish. It was built by the Colville family, who owned it until 1775. It was restored and remodelled in the mid 19th century, and restored again in the 20th century. It remains a private residence and is a category A listed building.[1] The grounds of the castle are included in the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes in Scotland, the national listing of significant gardens.






I wonder if this was/is the castle, we just didn't realize it?