Huntingtower Castle

Huntingtower was one of the castles of the Lords of Badenoch by at least the 14th century; Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan — the 'Wolf of Badenoch,' notorious for his misdeeds — died there in 1394. In the 15th century the castle was claimed variously by the Huntly family and by the Ruthvens, and for centuries afterwards it was known as the Place, or House, of Ruthven. The original tower, a free-standing gatehouse of three storeys and a garret (now the Eastern Tower), was joined around 1500 by a second, L-shaped Western Tower built about three metres away and linked only by a wooden bridge below the battlements — built, it is thought, so that defenders driven from one tower could flee to the other and draw the bridge up behind them.

Mary, Queen of Scots visited Huntingtower — then Ruthven Castle — on 25 June and 16 September 1565, and Regent Morton was summoned there from Ballinbreich Castle in September 1575 for the christening of the Ruthven heir, James. In the summer of 1582 the castle was home to the 4th Lord Ruthven, 1st Earl of Gowrie, who was drawn into a plot to seize the young King James VI. On 22 or 23 August 1582, Gowrie and his associates took the king prisoner at Ruthven Castle; James was held for ten months at various locations in what became known as the Raid of Ruthven, an attempt by Protestant conspirators to govern through control of the king. James Stewart, Earl of Arran, was also held prisoner at Ruthven. The king escaped his captors at St Andrews on 27 June 1583.

James VI forgave Gowrie and returned to dine at the House of Ruthven; in September 1584 he stayed there again with his young cousin Ludovic, Duke of Lennox, a visit noted by the German traveller Lupold von Wedel. After about ten days news reached them of plague in nearby Perth, where some of the household's servants lodged, and the king rode on to Tullibardine and then Stirling Castle while the rest of the royal household stayed behind at Huntingtower in quarantine. The castle and lands were restored to the Ruthvens in 1586, and the king visited again for a week in September 1587.

In 1600 the brothers John and Alexander Ruthven were accused — some say falsely — of attempting to kidnap the king, and were killed at the family's Perth townhouse, Gowrie House, by an overwhelming number of the king's armed men. This time James showed no mercy: he seized the Ruthven estates, abolished the family name by Act of Parliament, and barred their successors from holding titles or lands. The House of Ruthven ceased to exist, and by royal proclamation Ruthven Castle was renamed Huntingtower.

David Murray, 1st Viscount of Stormont, was made keeper of the renamed castle, and James VI, staying there again in April 1601, used the new name Huntingtower on his letters. In 1605 the Privy Council heard that members of Clan Gregor had damaged its woods, gardens and windows, and in 1623 the king ordered his surveyor, James Murray, to report on repairs the castle was said to need — though none are recorded as having been carried out. The crown held Huntingtower until 1643, when it passed to the Murrays of Tullibardine, ancestors of the Dukes of Atholl and Mansfield; John Murray, 1st Duke of Atholl, lived there, and his wife, Lady Mary Ross, bore a son at the castle on 7 February 1717. After her death in 1767 the castle was abandoned as a residence and kept on only by farm labourers; its last inhabitants, the family of custodian Niel Cowan, left in late 2002.

The castle is said to be haunted by 'Lady Greensleeves,' identified in local tradition as Dorothea, a daughter of the 1st Earl of Gowrie, who was discovered by her mother during clandestine meetings with a servant in the Eastern Tower and is said to have leapt from the tower roof to the battlements of the Western Tower, several metres away, to escape being caught. Sightings of a tall young woman in a green silk dress have been reported at Huntingtower over the years, usually at dusk, and are held to be an ill omen; a traveller who reported seeing her in the 1930s is said to have drowned the following day when he fell from a ferry crossing the River Tay.