Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Courthill

Courthill is a derelict Victorian mansion house at Kishorn in Wester Ross. I went for quick look round the outside of it on a very wet (and unsuitable for photography) day in December 2011.


I remember Courthill from the 1960s when we used to go on holiday to a cottage in nearby Achintraid when I was a child. I remember my parents telling me the roof was deliberately taken off after the War because the lead was more valuable than the house. That sort of thing that gets a 6 year old thinking - what's so good about lead that it's more expensive than a house? Especially a very big one like Courthill - are you sure it wasn't roofed with gold?


Below is the only picture I've ever seen of Courthill when it was still in use. It was taken in July 1931 and comes from the collection of Robert M Adam held by St Andrews University Photo Archive. [See Update at the end of this post for two more pictures.]


I had to look long and hard at that photograph to reassure myself it was indeed Courthill. But it is - what's in the centre of my photo at the top is off to the left behind the trees but the right hand bit in my photo is what's on the left of the 1931 pic.

As to the history of the house, around the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, Courthill was the smallest of the three estates which comprised the parish of Lochcarron. It belonged to Major Alexander Macdonald: a great grandson of Sir James Macdonald, 9th chief of the Macdonalds of Sleat, and married to a niece (by another account, a great grand-daughter) of Flora Macdonald, he was also tacksman (tenant) of Monkstadt in Trotternish on Skye where he lived.

An interesting snippet is that this well connected member of Clan Donald held Courthill as feudal vassal of the Earl of Seaforth, the chief of the MacKenzies - in earlier centuries, that might have caused a conflict of clan loyalties but was an irrelevance by the late 18th century.

Major Alexander Macdonald of Courthill & Monkstadt
An overtly English name like "Courthill" in the overwhelmingly Gaelic world of 19th century Wester Ross usually betrays an interesting story. I've not been able to find any explanation except that the name was in existence as early as 1807 when it's marked on Aaron Arrowsmith's map of that year.-

It's interesting to note that it's marked as "Court Hill or Laggandown" on the Arrowsmith map (above). Laggandown also appears on the Roy Maps of the 1740s-50s:-


So Laggandown - which I think is Gaelic for "brown hollow" - was the original name of a place which became known as Courthill. I'd guess an 18th century laird who'd made some money abroad settled there but decided its Gaelic name was too uncouth so he changed it to the name of his English wife's parents' house - or something like that. It's the reverse equivalent today of people buying a house in Wester Ross called "Sea View" and deciding that's too pedestrian and renaming it something more couthy like "Sealladh na Mara" (which I believe to be the Gaelic for "view of the sea").

Who changed the name, I can't discover but we read in a footnote to page 276 of Alexander Mackenzie's magisterial "History of the Macdonalds and Lords of the Isles" (1881) that Major Macdonald of Courthill's eldest son, another Alexander, "was never married. He became insane when a young man by an operation performed on his ears for deafness, and lived principally with his brother Hugh [at Monkstadt], and was quite harmless." Whether that tragic circumstance had anything to do with it, I don't know, but the New Statistical Account for the Parish of Lochcarron compiled in 1836 recorded that there were now only two landowners in the parish which indicates that the Macdonalds had sold Courthill to their neighbours, the MacKenzies of Applecross. (The other landowner was Matheson of Attadale.)

In 1854, Thomas MacKenzie, 9th laird of Applecross, sold the whole of his estates, including Courthill, to the splendidly named Francis Godolphin D'Arcy D'Arcy Osborne, 7th Duke of Leeds.

Arsy-D'Arcy D'Arcy to his friends
The sale was part of a common pattern in the mid 19th century in which native families who had owned their lands for generations sold out to Victorian nouveaux riches. But the Duke of Leeds didn't enjoy his new Scottish estate for long. In 1859, only five years after he had bought it, he died and Applecross passed to his nephew, the equally splendidly named Sackville George Lane Fox, Lord Conyers. Two years later, in 1861, Conyers sold the Applecross estate in lots. The central portion - which included Courthill and became known as Lochcarron Estate extending to 32,450 acres - was bought by Sir John Stuart.  

Approximate boundaries of Lochcarron Estate bought by Sir John Stuart in 1861
Stuart was the son of a family from Ballachulish in Argyll who became a barrister in London, then an MP before becoming a senior judge in the English courts. He retired in 1871 and died in 1876. His grave in the old cemetry next to Courthill House can still be seen.

Sir John Stuart of Lochcarron's grave - photo credit Roddie Macpherson
Sir John was succeeded by his son Dugald Stuart but in 1882, only six years after he came in to his inheritance, he sold Lochcarron Estate to Charles James Murray, the MP for Hastings (as in "Battle of ...". He later moved to be MP for Coventry 1895-1906.)

As to the history of Courthill House (as opposed to its surrounding estate), my main source of information is the scottisharchitects.org website. This merely records that "alterations and repairs" were carried out in 1856 by architect Alexander Ross. I suspect that understates what happened in 1856. I'd guess that hitherto Courthill was an unpretentious Georgian farm house and what Ross did was convert it into a Victorian mansion house. I suspect the Duke of Leeds, having just bought the whole Applecross Estate in 1854, fixed on Courthill as his seat and commissioned Ross to transform it into something befitting his ducal station (perhaps as a conscious departure from the MacKenzies' seat at Applecross itself)

The architects.org website records further additions in 1883 after the Murrays acquired the house and more in 1901 including the addition of a conservatory. Extensions to Courthill can be seen between the 1875 and 1902 editions of the Ordnance Survey Map below. Generally, it seems to have expanded east and north (that's to the right and behind in the photos above):-


Provost of Inverness 1889-95, the architect Alexander Ross, was responsible for a number of Victorian buildings in this part of Scotland including Gairloch Hotel and Duncraig Castle. There's more about him, with a photo, here.

In 1885, Charles Murray's daughter, Elspeth, died aged just 4. In 1900, tragedy afflicted the family again when his eldest son, Lieutenant Alastair Murray of the Grenadier Guards, was killed in action during the Boer War aged 22. Amongst the 1901 additions to Courthill was a chapel which included stained glass windows in memory of Elspeth and Alastair. More information about the chapel with pictures on Undiscovered Scotland.

Picture credit James Yardley

According to the Undiscovered Scotland website linked to above, the Murrays lost part of their fortune during World War I and came to live at Courthill full time as a result. This sort of suggests they were "slumming it in the holiday home" but I don't know what other estates or houses they had. Maybe it was just a case of having to sell the Edinburgh and/or London townhouses. 

C J Murray died in 1929 and his wife four years later. Despite their wealth and privilege, they'd had their fair share of tragedy and worry and apparently the death of Mrs Murray in 1933 was when Courthill was abandoned. [See Update at the end] The Murrays' surviving son, Charles, junior, had meantime [See Update] built himself another, no doubt smaller and more manageable house elsewhere on the estate. I don't know, but I'm guessing that house is Couldoran, a few miles north of Courthill on the road to Shieldaig.

Couldoran with the hills of Applecross behind

Charles Murray, junior, died in 1945 and that was the catalyst for the sale of Lochcarron Estate. It was sold in lots in 1946 and the purchaser of the lot with Courthill House on it, having no use for the house and finding it a liability, took the roof off and sold the lead to avoid having to pay rates on it. I don't know who the ruin belongs to now but the Murray family retained the chapel in 1946 and eventually gifted it to the Scottish Episcopal Church in 1979. It's still in business as a church (with wheelchair access as well) - further details here.

 
 Above is the partially blocked main gate of Courthill. The three stars in the crest are a feature (yellow on blue) in the arms of both the Dukes of Atholl and the Earls of Dunmore, both peerages held by Murrays. The Courthill family are descended from the Dunmores except that the stars in the Atholl and Dunmore arms are both two on top and one underneath contrary to the pattern at the gate of Courthill. I wonder if C J Murray unofficially adopted an ancient Murray motif with a minor adaptation so as not tousurp the arms of his more exalted cousins? Below the crest on the gate is an inscription in Gaelic (I think) but I don't know what it means.

Courthill seen from Google Earth
As I've typed this story about Courthill, I couldn't help thinking about Downton Abbey. The TV series portrays an image of these country houses as being somehow timeless, permanent and enduring. But so often when you dig in to the history, you discover just how ephemeral many of them actually were. Courthill has now stood empty and ruinous for almost as long as it was in use - just 75 years or so from the 1850s to the 1930s.

Picture credit Joe Dunckley
UPDATE 19 February 2018 - thanks very much to all those who've taken the trouble to comment on this post. From these we can deduce that Courthill was abandoned in 1943 rather than 1933. And according to Couldoran Estate's website, that house was built in 1929. Below are two further postcards of Courthill while still complete I've found since I wrote this post:-


29 comments:

  1. I spent some time at Applecross back in the 1960s. Part of it was by then owned by the Wills (fag) family, as I recall - if my memory is right!

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  2. As far as I know it still belongs to the Wills', Iain.

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  3. Another great read about a house I'm familiar with :) I've never seen such a good quality old photograph of Courthill, it's a shame the place has become something of a graveyard for rusted vehicles and old machinery.

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  4. Am interested to read about when Courthill was abandoned. I had an aunt (Mary MacCuish) who I understood was working at Courthill in 1941, when she developed leukaemia and died in a matter of weeks. She was 31. If I had been born a girl I'd have been called after her but as it was I was named Moray.

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  5. Thanks for your comment Moray. I'm not 100% sure of all my facts so if your aunt was still working at Courthill in 1941, then it would seem the house remained occupied for longer than I had understood.

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  6. The inscription on the gate appears to be "Dhè teasairg an tigh, an teine, an tìr 's gach aon a' gabhail tàmh an so an nochd" - Lord protect the house, the hearth, the land and each one resting here tonight.

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  7. I visited Wester Ross for the first time this September (having moved back to the UK on retirement). Was fascinated by the "ruin". Thank you so much for a beautifully researched history and thank you to Tiger for the translation. Saved me having to find a translator for my photo.

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  8. The Lochcarron Estate until recent times was owned by the Greg Family, who are famous as 19C Cotton tycoons in manchester Owners of Styal Mill. After Alexander Gregs Death I believe the estate was split. Courthill had previously been sold, I remember staying in the Garden cottage whilst living there in the 1990's.

    Couldoran was built as a Dowry house in the late 19c.

    Courthill probably gets its name from it being a a medieval Cuthill or Moothill, where local disputes would be settled and justice carried out. Derived from the Gaelic term 'comhdhail', a place of assembly. I have also found that a hill just to the north of Courthill was named on the 1850 Admiralty charts as Gallows hill http://maps.nls.uk/coasts/admiralty.cfm?id=1300, this also bears true as most Moot hills were associated with medieval executions as well.

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    1. Legal disputes in the area were sometimes settled by giving the accused the opportunity to flee to the neighboring juristiction of Applecross. If the accused made it over the Bealach Na Ba they would be spared. Five gallow trees used to hang perpetrators remain on Gallow Hill to the east of the site of Courthill House.

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  9. I commend you on this well written piece regarding Courthill. For those visiting the area, the Howard Doris Centre on the outskirts of Lochcarron (which incorporates the local Library) has an excellent historical record of the area and includes a lot of photo's of Courthill, together with the transcribed oral histories of locals who knew it and/or worked there in its heyday.

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  10. All that is left is a pile of rocks. 3/8/2014

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  11. Plant and equipment on site have reduced the building to a pile of rubble. Nothing to see for the Macdonalds willing to make the trip. Shame!!

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  12. A.C. Greig, a cotton mill owner from Cheshire purchased Loch Carron Estate and Courthill House in 1947.
    There is a small mound overlooking the sea, close to the house which is known locally as the Court Hill. On the hill above the road is the Hangmans Knoll presumably usd for carrying out the justice handed out by the court held below.

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  13. My father passed away a couple of years ago and we recently found a memoire he had written. From this we discovered that during his childhood my father’s grandparent’s gardener from 1938 was called Duncan Fraser whose previous job had been as head gardener at Courthill where he had been in charge of three others. Duncan was great companion of my fathers, was always full of wonderful tales to thrill a child and coped “wonderfully well”, despite having lost a leg as a gunner in the first world war. Until today I had never heard of Courthill but the internet is fantastic point of reference and this blog is superb. Scotland’s Lost houses by Ian Gow is a book full is similarly sad tales of architectural loss.

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    1. Thanks for adding that very interesting comment Alasdair.

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    2. Alasdair - my name is Duncan Fraser, the grandson of the gardener Duncan Fraser you mention in your very interesting post. My grandfather was a gardener at Courthill from 1931 to 1943 so I fear your date of 1938 is on the early side. I have in my possession a letter addressed to my grandfather from a Colonel Fraser of Wardlaw (presumably your great-grandfather) and dated 15.2.43. It reads:


      Sir,

      Upon learning from Mrs Stewart-Sandeman of Achnashellach by post this morning that you were leaving Courthill, I have sent you a telegram in the hope that you are still disengaged.

      This property is 4 miles from Beauly, close to the bus route and tradesmen's vans call at the house.

      The garden is of moderate size, chiefly vegetables, a few flowers. There is no glass or hot house.

      The gardener's cottage is close to the house and in very good condition. Consists of a kitchen and two bedrooms. There is no water laid on in the cottage but a good supply within 20 yards of the front door. The lighting is by oil lamp -

      The wages I am paying at present is £10.10.0 per month, together with 3 tons of coal, firewood and paraffin oil.

      Yours truly

      J Fraser Colonel


      It would have been very unlike my grandfather to give up a job without having another one to go to, so I suspect he was having to leave because Courthill was being abandoned. If I am right in this assumption, this would make the date of abandonment 1943. Moray, in an earlier comment, said his aunt was working at Courthill in 1941. So we now have two pieces of evidence for an abandonment date later than the 1930s.

      My grandfather worked at Wardlaw from 1943 until his death in 1952.

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    3. Duncan, thank you for that very interesting comment. So the working theory is now that Courthill was abandoned in 1943 making your grandfather redundant although he was fortunate enough to be able to get another job straight away at Wardlaw.

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  14. Neil,
    Thank you so much for this thorough article on Courthill. I was on holiday in Kishorn, and, out of curiosity, walked up to see the chapel. I found much more: the ruins, the rubble, the working chapel, and the graves of Murrays and Stuarts in the far older graveyard. I was hoping to find the stories behind these things, and your research has provided me with exactly that. Thanks again!

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  15. My parents moved to Kishorn approximately 1949. They worked for the Gregs. Dad used to garden in Courthill. In Spring he would send daffodils "down South" for the market. My parents were also responsible for removing all the beautiful furniture from Courthill,sending it South to the Gregs in Acton Bridge. This was prior to the roof being removed. We lived in the cottage across the road from Courthill. My Mum used to keep the cottages at the end of our drive ready for visitors and she cooked and kept Carnavere (not sure of the spelling) ready for when the Gregs and Murrays came to visit. Dad used to help out when the forementioned families came up to hunt for stags, bringing the bodies down from the mountains by a horse called Prince. I hope this is of interest

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  16. My parents worked for Mr. Gregg in Acton Bridge, Cheshire. In about 1949 our family moved to Kishorn. Dad gardened in Courthill and in Spring he would send trays of daffodils "South" for market. Dad had to oversee the disposal of all the beautiful furniture in Courthill. This was sent South to Acton Bridge. This was prior to the roof being removed. We lived in the cottage across the road from Courthill. Mum used to get the cottages at the end of our drive, ready for the visitors who would come up for hunting. She also prepared Carnavere (not sure of the spelling) which was the Gregg's home ready for their arrival. Dad would go out on the hills with them and help bring the stags down on a horse called Prince. We used to go to Church in the Chapel. My enduring memory is that as children, we were given sweets on the quiet during the sermon. When the visitors came, we used to have trout and venison. Such treats in those post war days. Dad would take Lizzie the ferret out and catch rabbits, which Mum would cook. We went to Lochcarron school by taxi, which was driven by Mr. Bains. I hope this is of interest











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  17. Thanks for this. I am currently researching the history of the Ross-shire SWRI Federation and it's so nice to see a link re Courthill, Couldoran (Elizabeth Murray)and a long standing president of Ardgay institute Mrs Sarah Mackenzie (Duncan Fraser's daughter). I've managed to join a few dots because of this.

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  18. I Googled Courthill and found this marvellous sire (again) only because a search on the Brtish Newspaper Archive for "Luskintyre" turned up a surprise: "DEATHS: … At Courthill, on the 28th January last. Alexander Macleod, Esq, of Luskintyre, New South Wales, aged 49. Inverness Courier, Wednesday 11 March 1835, p 3 of 4." This particular Alexander Macleod went to Australia in 1822 and (presumably) has some connection with the Macleods of Harris because he named his 2000-acre land grant "Luskintyre. See https://www.jenwilletts.com/alexander_mcleod.html. A little mystery for anyone interested.

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  19. Fascinating reading, my grandparents lived and worked for the ladies of the house(couldoran) back in the 1970's to 80's(and before), we used to holiday there from our home in Stornoway back then and i remember the ladies as being called Miss Sylvia and Miss Huntsman who were lovely and used to make us pancakes all the time.Have you any info on these woman as my grandparents moved down to Lochcarron in the 80's so our trips up to Couldoran ended then(though i re-visited on my 50th birthday last year).i believe 'the smedleys took over Couldoran then.
    Regards
    Kenny

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  20. in the late 80's couldoran was bought by the Pattinsons and use for the fish farm Kinloch Damph Ltd. I worked for them in the early 90's living in a caravan next to deer larder. Lovely people I have fond memories of my time there.

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  21. Hello - my name is Aaron, I live in NZ. I’ve came across this as I’m doing family research. My 5th Great Grandfather Donald Kennedy died at Courthill House and I believe is buried there in 1855. He married a Helen Mackenzie in 1802. He was a surgeon with the Royal Navy. Their son Roderick was also born there. If anyone is someone that lives in the area I would love a pic of the gravesite till I can get there myself!
    Aaron.Gilmore.nz@gmail.com

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  22. Hello - my name is Aaron, I live in NZ. I’ve came across this as I’m doing family research. My 5th Great Grandfather Donald Kennedy died at Courthill House and I believe is buried there in 1855. He married a Helen Mackenzie in 1802. He was a surgeon with the Royal Navy. Their son Roderick was also born there. If anyone is someone that lives in the area I would love a pic of the gravesite till I can get there myself!
    Aaron.Gilmore.nz@gmail.com

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  23. Hello - my name is Aaron, I live in NZ. I’ve came across this as I’m doing family research. My 5th Great Grandfather Donald Kennedy died at Courthill House and I believe is buried there in 1855. He married a Helen Mackenzie in 1802. He was a surgeon with the Royal Navy. Their son Roderick was also born there. If anyone is someone that lives in the area I would love a pic of the gravesite till I can get there myself!
    Aaron.Gilmore.nz@gmail.com

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  24. Hello - my name is Aaron, I live in NZ. I’ve came across this as I’m doing family research. My 5th Great Grandfather Donald Kennedy died at Courthill House and I believe is buried there in 1855. He married a Helen Mackenzie in 1802. He was a surgeon with the Royal Navy. Their son Roderick was also born there. If anyone is someone that lives in the area I would love a pic of the gravesite till I can get there myself!
    Aaron.Gilmore.nz@gmail.com

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  25. I found this account very interesting. I am researching a friend's ancestors and was curious to find that a gt gt uncle was a servant here to Sir John Stuart and wanted to find a little more info about Courthills. He must have travelled from London (away from his wife and family) with an entourage of staff during 1871. By complete coincidence, and with no relationship to my friend's ancestry whatsoever, my husband's family hail from Trotternish on Skye. Thankyou for a very interesting read!

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