Qualla: Balgonie Castle

Balgonie Castle: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Supergolden, CC BY-SA 3.0. In the mid-19th century the owners of Balgonie Castle had its roofs removed. The reason was bureaucratic. A roofless building paid no property tax. So they tore the lead away, opened the great hall to the sky, let the stair towers fill with rain. The 14th-century keep, the 15th-century range built when James IV himself stopped by to gift eighteen shillings to the masons, the rooms where Field Marshal Sir Alexander Leslie planned the Covenanter campaigns - all of it left to rot for a small tax break. The castle is still standing today only because, in 1971, a man named David Maxwell decided to start putting the roofs back.

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Image: User:Supergolden | CC BY-SA 3.0

Balgonie Castle: Eight Centuries of Owners

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Supergolden assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0. The lands of Balgonie were held by the Sibbalds from at least 1246. Around the 1360s they built a barmkin - a fortified courtyard - with a tower house at its northwest corner. The lands passed by marriage to Sir Robert Lundie, who became Lord High Treasurer of Scotland and extend...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Supergolden assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 3.0

Balgonie Castle: The Field Marshal

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Johnston, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1635 the castle was sold to Sir Alexander Leslie - a Scottish soldier who had spent decades fighting for the Swedish army in the Thirty Years War, rising to the rank of Field Marshal under Gustavus Adolphus. Leslie came home and led the Covenanter armies in the Bishops Wars. H...

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Image: David Johnston | CC BY-SA 2.0

Balgonie Castle: The Long Decline

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Grayswoodsurrey, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1824 Balgonie was sold to James Balfour of Whittingehame - father of James Maitland Balfour and grandfather of Arthur Balfour, who served as British Prime Minister from 1902 to 1905. The Balfours could not arrest the castle's decay. The roofs came off mid-century to dodge taxe...

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Image: Grayswoodsurrey | CC BY-SA 4.0

Balgonie Castle: Green Jeanie and the Skeleton

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mcwesty (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Balgonie comes with its ghost stories. Green Jeanie is said to be the spectre of one of the Lundie occupants, glimpsed in the green dress of an earlier century. A 17th-century soldier walks the courtyard. A dog appears and disappears. A hooded man has been reported in the corrido...

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Image: Mcwesty (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0