The Old Pretender’s f inal retreat...
Yours for just £1.6million – Scottish castle that’s played a key role in history
IT PLAYED host to Mary, Queen of Scots twice as she rallied her subjects to fight Elizabeth I for the English Crown. And two centuries later her descendant James Stuart, ‘the Old Pretender’, spent his last night in Scotland there, before fleeing to France after his failed 1715 Jacobite rebellion against the English.
Throughout history, The Craig, a six-bedroom castle outside Montrose, has been a haven for Scotland’s leaders at key points in their lives. And it is even said that one of the country’s heroes visited it in death: the disembodied heart of Robert the Bruce was allegedly brought to the castle by medieval knight Sir James Douglas. Bruce had charged him with taking it to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Douglas stayed at the castle while en route to the Holy Land, but was killed during his mission, in battle against Moorish forces in Spain.
The room that Mary stayed in is called ‘the Mary, Queen of Scots room’. It is on the top floor and today looks like a Victorian nursery, with low ceilings and latticed windows. It is believed the room has always been green, and there is said to be a green lady who haunts the house.
Mary’s father, James V of Scotland, visited the castle twice, in 1535 and 1539, and, outside, the steps still exist where it is believed that their descendant, the ‘Old Pretender’ James Stuart, strode down to the sea to the boat that bore him away.
The castle – which is for sale through Savills estate agents for offers of more than £1.57million – dates back further than the earliest of these visitors. Displaying their antiquity, the walls are thick and stony and on the ground floor the rooms are small.
However, the first-floor sitting rooms have proportions of Georgian elegance – the original 13th Century castle has had various additions over the years.
While much of the castle’s history still remains – with its intriguing nooks and crannies, priest holes and tiny staircases – it is now warmed by central heating, woodburning stoves and roaring log fires, fed by wood from the property’s 20 acres of fields and woodland.
The sauna, which is carved from an ancient wall, and the yoga room in one of the cellars are places where the old and the new meet.
The kitchen is rustic, with an Aga, but has tiles hand-painted by American designer Richard Jordan, ‘who was down on his hands and knees in the kitchen’, says owner Betsy Horn. Jordan also recreated and repainted the drawingroom ceiling, where there had been a painting from the Scottish Renaissance of the 16th Century, fragments of which were located in 1921 during restorative work. These fragments are presently on display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
Jordan included all the detail from the historical fragments in the new design, which includes birds, animals, human figures and initials from the period, as well as a portrait of Betsy and her husband John alongside Mary, Queen of Scots.
Jordan also executed two other friezes in the house: in the dining room there is a display of extinct Scottish animals and the morning room has a decorative cornice.
Unostentatious and gracious, the mini-fortress that is The Craig is perched above the tidal basin of the River Esk on the east coast of Scotland, overlooking the coastal town of Montrose. And year after year, tens of thousands of geese fly into the estuary in autumn to feed.
The Craig’s grounds cover 20.8 acres. With the estate’s two-bedroom timber cottage added, the £1.57 million minimum price tag rises to £1.65million. The property’s two-bedroom gardener’s cottage comes as part of the basic sale.
‘I fell in love with the property the moment I went down the drive, with the sunlight slanting through the trees and the lighthouse in the distance,’ says Betsy.
SHE adds: ‘This is such a warm, comfortable and manageable house to live in. We are so sad to be leaving it but my husband needs to be in the warmth of Florida, as he has not been well. It was a magical part of our lives and I will miss it deeply.
‘I have never seen the “green lady” ghost but others have. Once, my daughter thought she saw a phantom in the upstairs room which we used as a nursery, next door to the room where Mary, Queen of Scots is said to have stayed.
‘The whole place is full of history – you can feel it in the walls – and my friend Richard has done the most incredible job incorporating that history through the tiles he has painted all through the house.’
Ruaraidh Ogilvie, of Savills, says: ‘For the price of a two-bedroom flat in Clapham you can buy The Craig, one of the most historic country houses in Scotland, complete with six bedrooms, seven reception rooms, set in more than 20 acres, in one of the most beautiful locations north of the border.’
He says that the fall in sterling following the EU referendum has had an effect on interest. ‘We are seeing an increase in the level of non-Scottish buyers in the prime markets, including overseas buyers.’