Fingask Castle

The lands of Fingask are named in the foundation charter of the Abbey of Scone granted by Alexander I, said to be of 1114 or 1115. The name comes from the Gaelic fionn-gasg, a white or light-coloured appendage, and the place was once an explicitly holy one, a stop-off between the abbeys at Falkirk and Scone, set 200 feet above Rait with the Carse of Gowrie and the Firth of Tay below.

The Bruce family, descended from the senior line of the Bruces of Clackmannan, held the lands of Rait with Fingask among them from the fifteenth century. Robert Bruce held charter of Rait in 1484, confirmed in 1488. The castle is dated 1592 and was built around a twelfth-century structure; while Patrick Bruce was laird a stone bearing the date 1594 was set into the house. A tombstone by the ruined church of Rait records Jonet Gibsone, spouse of William Bruce, laird of Fingask, who died on the last day of April 1647. Around 1660 the mercat cross of Perth was moved into the grounds. The last of the Bruce lairds was Laurence Bruce, whose debts required the sale of the estate for his creditors in 1671.

Patrick Threipland bought the estate in 1672, and it was erected into a barony the same year. He renovated the building and laid out the gardens, and in 1674 added the neighbouring tower house and estate of Kinnaird. The same year he was knighted for his diligence in suppressing conventiclers, and in 1687 was created a baronet of Nova Scotia. He died in 1689 a prisoner at Stirling Castle for his adherence to the ousted James VII.

His son Sir David, 2nd Baronet (c.1670-1746), joined the Jacobite rising of 1715 and fought with the Earl of Mar against the government at the Battle of Sheriffmuir. When the rising failed the baronetcy was attainted by act of parliament and Fingask and its estate were forfeited. It was bought for £9,606 6s 4½d by the York Buildings Company, an English waterworks company that had begun to specialise in forfeited land, which held the property until 1783 while leasing it to the 2nd baronet's daughter Dame Katherine Threipland, "the lass of Gowrie".

Government troops badly damaged the castle in 1745, as the Threiplands once more supported the Jacobites; David Threipland (1694-1745), son of the 2nd baronet, was killed at the Battle of Prestonpans. His half-brother Dr Stuart Threipland repurchased Fingask in 1783 at a sale of forfeited land for £12,207.

In 1826 the attainder of 1715 was repealed by Act of Parliament and Sir Patrick Budge Murray Threipland (1762-1837), an advocate, was restored to the baronetcy. Between 1828 and 1831 he added to the west front of the house, with building onto the south front continuing until 1840. He laid out the park, and his son planted the topiary gardens and installed the statuary for which Fingask is noted.

The 5th baronet, Sir Patrick Murray Threipland (1800-1882), served as a major in the Perth militia until 1843 and lived at Fingask with his three elder sisters; the census of 31 March 1851 records a household staff of seven. When his sister Jessie died in May 1871, Mrs Drummond of Megginch Castle reported that the "life of the old house went out". On the 5th baronet's death in 1882 the Threipland baronetcy became dormant, and Fingask was left to his first cousin's second son, William Scott Kerr, who took the name William Murray Threipland; in 1915 he was appointed to command the newly raised Welsh Guards, and became Colonel of the regiment in 1937.

The castle passed out of the family in 1917, bought by the whisky merchant Sir John Henderson Stewart, 1st Baronet, with an estate then of 2,587 acres. Prohibition in the United States left him heavily indebted, and he took his own life at Fingask on 6 February 1924. H. B. Gilroy of Ballumbie bought the estate in 1925; the house was saved from ruin but wholly remodelled, its spiral staircases removed and its nineteenth-century frontal additions demolished.

In 1969 Mark Stepney Murray Threipland, grandson of Colonel William Murray Threipland, bought the estate back into Threipland hands, by then reduced to 75 acres, and in 1996 it passed to Andrew Murray Threipland. The castle has been a Category B listed building since October 1971, and the estate is included on the Inventory of Historic Gardens and Designed Landscapes. In 2020 Threipland set out plans to turn the part of the estate known as Witches Knowe into a barrow cemetery of more than a thousand burial plots, with a semi-underground candle-lit chamber for ashes.