Fetteresso Castle

Cropmarks in the policies around the castle show a ring ditch at the north end of a cursus, one of those prehistoric sets of parallel linear earthworks whose purpose is unknown; antiquarians fancied them grounds for athletic contest, hunting or archery, which is unsubstantiated. A cairn found near the castle in 1822 held human remains, and the size and shape of its chamber of unhewn whinstone mark the burial as Bronze Age. Legend makes it the grave of Malcolm I, who is recorded to have been slain at Fetteresso in 954, and the hillock has become known as Malcolm's Mount, though on current archaeological analysis the crypt is unlikely to be that recent. A Beaker burial urn was found at Fetteresso in 1998. Several miles to the north-west lies the Roman camp of Raedykes, where a full legion encamped, one of a string of marching camps linking Angus to Moray.

The property is recorded as owned by the Strachans, who were supporters and kinsmen of John Comyn, Earl of Buchan. Robert de Bruce opposed the Balliol and later the Comyn claim to the Scottish throne, a quarrel that culminated at the Battle of Barra Hill in 1308. Castlehill of Strachan was burned out by Bruce, and the Barony of Strachan was afterwards disinherited from the de Strachan family and granted by him to Sir Alexander Fraser in about 1316, on the evidence of the Robertson Index.

The barony of Fetteresso passed in the fourteenth century to William Keith, Earl Marischal of Scotland, who inherited it through his mother, Sir Alexander Fraser's daughter. The Keith Earls Marischal, who also held the nearby fortress of Dunnottar, built the tower house. James VI hunted in the woods at Fetteresso on 20 June 1580 while he was staying at Dunnottar.

Crow-stepped gables and battlement crenellation were introduced to the house. A dovecote of considerable height was raised to the south of the castle in the seventeenth century. Jean Hunter was living at Fetteresso in 1659. She was accused of witchcraft and hanged at her home. An artist and wright named Alexander Charles worked at Fetteresso as an overseer, flourishing between 1671 and 1678 and publishing his drawings in at least one book. Late in the seventeenth century the Duff family controlled Fetteresso and expanded the building around the old tower house. The castle was rebuilt in 1761 as a Palladian manor in Scottish Gothic style.

In the 1940s the castle belonged to Maurice Simpson and Geraldine Simpson, née Pringle, heiress to the Pringle knitwear fortune; the couple went on to acquire nearby Muchalls Castle and lived there. After their tenure the roof was off Fetteresso for some period from around 1954, and the castle was bought by a local landowner who left it in his will to the Don family. In the latter part of the twentieth century it was restored and sub-divided into seven houses, which remains its use. Geraldine Simpson lived on in the district until her death in 2010.

The castle has been a category B listed building since 5 August 1987. In 2020 one of the residential units within it, known as Number Seven, was placed on the market.