Redcastle: the genealogy of a Highland Estate - #4

At the end of Part 3, we’d reached the point where MacKenzie of Redcastle’s creditors had forced the sale of the estate at a public roup (auction) to be held in Edinburgh on 25 June 1790.

Above is an extract from the advert in the Caledonian Mercury (full thing here - may require paid subscription). The estate could be bid for as a whole or in three lots: Easter Kessock with the ferry and salmon fishings; the main part of the estate (which was separated from Easter Kessock by Wester Kessock (now called Bellfield) which belonged to Kilcoy Estate) as far west as (and including) Coulmore; and the rest, including the castle. The upset price (reserve) for the whole was £22,402: 4s: 4 1/12d. That curiously ‘un-round’ figure down twelfths of a penny had been fixed by the Court of Session arithmetically by applying a multiple to the ‘free rent’ of the estate, namely, the gross annual rent paid by the estate’s tenants less the teinds (Scottish word for tithes), feuduty to the Crown and ‘public burdens’ (local taxes assessed on land rents). The respective figures were (rounded to the nearest £):

Gross rent:                           £1,200

Teinds:                                  (£198)

Feuduty & public burdens:       (£60)

Free rent:                               £942

A net income of £942 in 1790 is about £125,000 today so that’s the sort of money lairds like Captain Kenneth MacKenzie (see Part 3) were burning their way through every year. In fairness, though, the actual amount available to them would have been reduced by annuities to dowagers (sometimes as high as a third of the rent) and younger siblings etc. plus, of course, interest payments on debt incurred by previous generations who’d lived beyond their means. Anyway, the multiple applied to the free rent to arrive at the upset price was 25 in respect of so much of it as came from the farms on the estate (£713) and 20 in respect of the other assets such as the fishings and ferry of Kessock, mills, houses and crofts (£229).

It’s noteworthy that the rent (and feuduty) are now expressed wholly in money terms rather than the money plus quantities of grain and other commodities as in previous centuries. What in fact was happening, though, was that the tenants were paying cash in lieu of the grain etc. elements of their rents and the advert says that the rates of conversion into money had historically been “very moderate” implying that there was scope for a purchaser to take amore businesslike line in future: squeeze more cash out of the tenantry, in other words.

Photo credit: Wendy Harrison

The advert also mentions that “the mansion house” - i.e. the castle - “could be repaired at a small expense in such a manner as to accommodate a large family” and also that Redcastle Estate is a barony. That was an estate the owner of which had certain additional privileges over other owners, most notably the right to hold a court (‘baron court’) in which to prosecute and settle disputes amongst his tenants. Baron courts also functioned as sorts of mini parliaments for estates, making local bye-laws for maintaining good neighbourhood amongst the tenants etc. Barony status was typically conferred on an estate in a Charter of Novodamus (see Part 3 for what that was) and in Redcastle’s case that must have been some time in the second half of the 17th century (possibly 1680: see below) when the public records are not available online as I mentioned Part 3. A baron in this sense - the owner of a barony - was not a peer entitled to sit in the House of Lords but he did have certain additional heraldic privileges over lesser mortals and these still exist today when all other privileges of barony have gone. In recent years, it’s become possible - bizarrely, you may think - to detach the barony title with its residual privileges from the land it related to and sell it separately from the land. Such 'naked barony titles' can command five or even six figure sums from people who imagine they’re in some way thereby buying their way into the British aristocracy. And, as this entry in the Forum for the Scottish Baronage suggests, this appears to be what’s happened in the case of the barony of Redcastle with the Baillie family trustees who own the estate today having sold the barony title in 2016 to an Australian lady. (The page linked to there suggests Redcastle was created - or, in the jargon ‘erected as’ - a barony in 1680 which would have been in the time of Colin, 4th MacKenzie of Redcastle.)

Anyway, back in 1790 at the judicial sale of Redcastle, after brisk bidding the estate sold as a whole for £25,000 (about £3.3 million today) to James Grant, Younger (heir to the estate) of Shewglie, in Glen Urquhart. The Grants of Shewglie were a cadet branch of the Grants of Corrimony (at the head of Glen Urquhart) who were themselves cadets of the Grant chiefly line, the Grants of Freuchie (in Strathspey and now called Grantown-on-Spey). The second of the family acquired Shewglie from Freuchie in 1628 and his descendants were incorrigible Jacobites: James, the 3rd laird, fought at the Battle of Killiecrankie (1689) while his son Alexander, the 4th, was out in both the 1715 and 1745 Rebellions. He fought at the Battle of Culloden alongside his son James, later the 5th laird. Both were taken prisoner but while the former died in custody in London, the latter was eventually tried but acquitted of treason. Returning home, he found Shewglie House had nevertheless been burnt by the army but he built a new house in 1762 which still stands today (pictures here). The 5th laird of Shewglie’s son stayed out of political trouble and instead went to India where he rose in the service of the East India Company to become their resident (ambassador) at Hyderabad. In 1790, he returned to Scotland and spent the fortune he’d amassed on Redcastle and the following year succeeded his father as laird of Shewglie as well: he was described by a German academic in 1799 as “a middle-aged person, stiff and ungraceful in his carriage as most Scotsmen are; but he is a genuine man of business, and an excellent landlord.” 

Grant connections (click for a clearer view)

Grant died in 1808 and, having no children, was succeeded as owner of Redcastle (and, I assume, Shewglie as well) by his first cousin, Lt. Col. Alexander Grant, also of the East India Company. He, in turn, was succeeded by his eldest son, Peter (also called Patrick), in 1816. In September that year, he was visited at Redcastle by a distant cousin, another descendant of the Shewglie family, Charles Grant, who, after time in India, had risen after his return to Britain in 1790 to become the chairman of the East India Company and MP for Inverness. Charles wrote to his wife from Redcastle:

The place is much improved, but I fear must be given up for a time. Peter, the eldest son, is much more of a man and of a Christian than I had reckoned on, but he is inexperienced and sanguine.

Peter (Patrick) married Charles’ daughter in 1819. The latter’s biographer noted (here): 

unhappily for him [Peter (Patrick) Grant of Redcastle], he succeeded to the [Redcastle] estate after it had fallen into a very encumbered condition. The endeavour to retrieve this state of affairs occasioned [Charles] Grant a good deal of labour and trouble. He received great assistance from his two elder sons; but it does not appear that he was successful in his efforts even to the time of his death [in 1823]. In fact, much of the correspondence of these last years was occupied with this subject, and one of his last letters was about it.

Peter (Patrick’s) financial difficulties came to a head within weeks of his father in law’s death in October 1823 when he granted a Trust Deed for his Creditors. That was when a person attempted to stave off the stigma of formal bankruptcy by conveying all his property to a trustee for the purpose of selling it and distributing the proceeds amongst his creditors. In April 1824, Grant’s trustee, Edinburgh accountant Claud Russell, placed an advert in the Inverness Courier inviting the creditors to meet him in Bennet’s Hotel in Inverness to hear his proposals for paying their debts and meantime to forbear from foreclosing on the estate. 

The grave of Col. Alexander Grant and his son Patrick (Peter) Grant of Redcastle in the Shewglie family burial ground at Drumnadrochit before its restoration in 2021. Photo credit: Inverness Courier 

There was a big hint about what Patrick Grant's trustee for his creditors, Claud Russell, was proposing in another advert in the same edition of the Courier. This was one intimating that, not the whole of Redcastle but three lots of it - Easter Kessock, the Ferry, and Garguston and Spittal Farms - would be sold by public roup (auction) at Gibson’s Sale Room at 71 Princes Street in Edinburgh on 3rd August 1824. This advert mentioned that a “freehold qualification” would be included with Easter Kessock. That’s a parliamentary vote: before the Reform Act 1832, the right to vote in Scotland depended, not just upon owning land over a certain value but holding it feudally directly from the Crown and according to ancient valuations struck centuries ago (“40 shilling lands of Old Extent”) often bearing little relationship to the situation in the 19th century. To put that another way, you could own a huge amount of land but you didn’t get to vote if it didn’t happen to be a 40/- land OE held directly of the Crown. Easter Kessock - a very small property - happened to be both so its owner would get to vote. 

There was no vote with the ferry but the purchaser would get the inns on either side and the rent of £400 (about £38,000 today!) a year paid by the ferryman. The advert waxed lyrical about how Garguston and Spittal Farms would form a “beautiful separate estate” but despite all these attractions, the three lots didn’t sell in 1824. Another roup at Gibson’s Sale Rooms was therefore advertised for 8th March 1825, this time for the whole estate.

It was in connection with this sale that the beautiful plan of Redcastle Estate (except Easter Kessock) I linked to at the beginning of the first article in this series was drawn. Here's the link again and I’ve screenshotted the plan below but it’s worth following the link to zoom in on it for a detailed view. You can see faintly at the bottom left corner the docquet signed and dated 8th March 1825 by Claud Russell as Patrick Grant’s trustee for his creditors to the effect that this was the property you were bidding on. (Presumably there was another plan of Easter Kessock.)

Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

The plan also has a nice vignette of the castle:

Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

This time, the estate sold. The purchaser was Sir William Fettes Bt., a rich Edinburgh tea merchant who was Lord Provost of the city 1804-06 but is more famous as founder of Fettes College there. The price he paid for Redcastle was £135,000. That's £11 million in today's prices and, taking account of the intervening inflation, an astonishing 236% real terms increase in price since the estate was last sold 35 years earlier, to James Grant of Shewglie in 1790.

 

Sir William Fettes, Bt. Picture credit Wikipedia

Fettes died in 1836 having been predeceased by his only son so Redcastle was sold again in 1838. The price achieved this time was £120,000 (so clearly Fettes had purchased at the top of the market!) and the purchaser was Hugh Baillie.

The Baillies had owned parts of the castle lands of Inverness since the 15th century, holding them as feudal vassals of the Earl of Huntly wearing his hat as hereditary sheriff of that town and constable of its castle. In the mid-17th century, the family split into two branches: of Dunain about 3 miles southwest of Inverness, the senior branch (read about them here), and of neighbouring Dochfour, the junior branch (see here). Hugh Baillie, the purchaser of Redcastle in 1838, was a younger son of Evan, the 5th of Dochfour but it would be wrong to think of these people as just minor Inverness-shire lairds. As a younger son of the 4th laird, Evan had not expected to inherit Dochfour and, after a brief military career in the West Indies, he acquired sugar plantations there before settling in Bristol where he formed the sugar trading firm E Baillie, Sons & Co with his three sons, Peter, Hugh (purchaser of Redcastle) and James. All four became spectacularly rich in the process. Evan's obituary in the Inverness Courier in 1835 called him one of the richest commoners in Britain but it was, of course, a fortune built on the backs of African slaves: when slavery was abolished in the 1834, the Baillies owned 3,100 slaves and they received £110,000 compensation for them (about £12 million today). Leaving his sons in Bristol adding to their fortunes as partners of the Bristol Old Bank, Evan retired to Dochfour (which he'd inherited from his older childless brother in 1799) around 1815 and in 1818 bought Tarradale, the estate which marches with Redcastle on the west (and anciently part of the Earldom of Ross: nice plan of it in 1788 here). He passed it on to his second son, Hugh, so Redcastle as the neighbouring estate to the east was a natural purchase for him.

In 1839, Hugh Baillie commissioned the architect William Burn (whose most famous works are probably St John's Church at the west end of Princes Street in Edinburgh (1818) and Inverness Castle (1836)) to remodel Redcastle. On this website, if you scroll down you can see an early sketch proposal by Burn but nothing quite so grand (or ugly!) as this was ultimately carried out and the main change was the addition of an unremarkable block to the north west elevation of the castle which you can see in the photo below (the lower, two storey part to the right of the spire):

Redcastle from the north in 1967, about 15-20 years after it was abandoned. Photo courtesy of Historic Environment Scotland

The castle's citation as a listed building (here) suggests that the 1840s Burn alterations also included the three storey block in the re-entrant angle between the main stair tower and the south wing - the bit I've outlined in red on the photo below ...

Photo credit: Arjayempee

... and also the loggia which ran along the front of the castle (gone now). But I wonder if that's correct because I think you can see both of these in the drawing of the castle on the 1825 plan (above). The red outlined block is clearly later than the 17th century stair tower to its right but I think it was added earlier than the 1840s. MacGibbon & Ross remark (here) that this block is "a more modern addition" to the 17th century (and earlier) core of the castle and I think it's significant they include it in their plan (below) which consciously omits the 1840s Burn additions.

The block outlined red on the photo above which I think is earlier than the 1840s Burn additions is marked X

Something else probably done to the castle during Hugh Baillie's ownership was the addition of dormer heads (pediments above the dormer windows) re-used from an old 17th century building in Inverness called Castle Tolmie (though it wasn't a castle as such) which was demolished in 1849 to make way for a new bridge across the River Ness to replace one washed away by a flood that year (the bridge between Bridge Street and Young Street which was itself replaced by the present bridge in the 1960s). There's a picture of one of these dormer heads (no longer in position) below and more here. Generally, I like to think Hugh had the taste to restrain William Burn from going full Victorian pseudo-gothic and keep a lot of native vernacular in the look of Redcastle.

 

(C) Crown copyright HES

Turning from the architecture of the castle to the agriculture on its estate, the period very roughly 1760-1840 - spanning the end of the MacKenzie ownership of Redcastle through the Grants and Fettes to the early Baillie ownership - was the era of agricultural improvement. The hand maiden of the Industrial Revolution, this was the time when farming was transformed from being primarily subsistence (the majority of the population being farmers growing their own food) to primarily commercial (growing crops to sell into the market to feed the growing percentage of the population who couldn't grow their own because they lived in cities and worked in factories). Amongst the changes in farming practice during improvement were a move from farms being held by multiple tenants to being held by single tenants on longer leases; a move from land being cultivated in irregular clusters of rigs (strips) to the more regularly shaped enclosed fields we're familiar with today; and improved crop rotations, fertilisation and machinery. In 1796, the Minister of the Parish of Killearnan, in which Redcastle was one of the only two estates (the other being Kilcoy), lamented in the Statistical Account that agricultural improvement was "backward in the extreme". That's consistent with the advert for the estate when the MacKenzies were forced to sell it in 1790 which said that it was "still in [its] natural [i.e. unimproved] state". 

But almost 30 years later, the 1825 map evidences considerable change. It showed that nearly half the estate was under plantations of trees (something for which the Minister congratulated the then new owner in 1796, James Grant of Shewglie). Of the rest, the agricultural land, about a third was under six large (by the standards of the time if not now), improved single tenant farms averaging 100 acres. Another third was under 18 small single tenant farms averaging 25 acres while the remaining third was divided almost evenly between around 65 single tenant crofts averaging 4 acres and 6 farms still in multiple tenancy averaging about 50 acres. 

It's also noteworthy from the 1825 plan that some of the farm names that appeared in the earliest 15th century charters and rentals are still there (e.g. Garguston, Lettoch), some have disappeared (Hilton) and some new names have emerged (Parkton, Torgormack). Some of the older names have been divided and Coulmore is an interesting example of this: the extract from the plan below, onto which I've added the boundaries of Coulmore in red, shows that Easter Coulmore (116 acres) is still an old style multiple tenant farm. The jumble of houses circled yellow is a dead giveaway of this and, in the list of tenants, its tenant is given simply as "sundries". Note that it doesn't appear to have been divided into fields. Contrast with Wester Coulmore (96 acres) which is obviously an improved single tenant farm (tenant: Donald McLean). Note also some of the crofts ranging from 1.5 to 8 acres along the top:-

Coulmore Farm in 1825    

So I think agricultural improvement was still unfinished business on Redcastle Estate in 1825. The next time we get to see any detail of the holdings on the estate is the Valuation Roll of 1855 when the era of agricultural improvement is generally regarded as complete. (I can't link to this VR directly but go here, select 1855, select Ross & Cromarty under 'County/City' and Killearnan under 'Parish' and type 'Estate of Redcastle' in the 'Place' box.) Now, without paying to see the actual scans of the VRs with the rateable values, this is much less finely grained than looking at a plan like the 1825 one: you can't see the respective sizes of the various holdings and can only distinguish between farms on the one hand and crofts on the other. Nevertheless, the takeaway from the 1855 VR, I think, was that there didn't appear to be any multiple tenant farms left and there were only about 45 crofts now compared with about 65 in 1825. No doubt some crofts had been absorbed into the larger farms as they fell vacant but there doesn't seem to have been any wholesale clearance of crofts on Redcastle in the mid-19th century as was happening on the west coast at that time. There are still many crofts left on the Black Isle today and one or two on Redcastle Estate.

 

Hugh Baillie who purchased Redcastle in 1838 from A History of Banking in Bristol from 1750 to 1899

During his lifetime, but in which year exactly I don't know, Hugh Baillie passed Redcastle and Tarradale to his younger brother and fellow Bristol banking partner, James (picture of him here). The latter had previously bought a huge acreage in the Highlands including Glenshiel Estate in Wester Ross and when he died childless in 1863, Redcastle and Tarradale went to his nephew, Hugh's son, Henry, while Glenshiel and the rest went to his cousin, Evan II Baillie, 6th of Dochfour (1798-1883: grandson of the Evan previously mentioned and who also, incidentally, acquired Dunain in 1872 following the death childless in 1869 of the 14th and last laird of the senior Baillie line). 

Baillie family tree (click for a clearer view)

When Henry Baillie died in 1885 with his son having predeceased him, Redcastle and Tarradale passed to his cousin twice removed, Colonel James E B Baillie, 7th of Dochfour (1859-1931). In 1899, he (James) sold Garguston Farm to its tenant Robert Trotter (a Robert Trotter is identified as tenant of Garguston on the 1825 plan so a lot of continuity there); Fettes & Blairdhu Farms to a Mr MacDonald (500 acres: they were bought back into the estate from his son in 1937); Coulmore and Lettoch Farms to their tenant Alexander MacQueen (this sale also included some neighbouring crofts and totalled 700 acres); and finally Easter Kessock with the ferry and salmon fishery. It was reported at the time that Colonel Baillie was contemplating selling all the rest of Redcastle in lots but that didn’t come to pass. 

The sale of Easter Kessock caused Col. Baillie some bother. The purchaser, Mr - afterwards Sir - Donald MacDonald was, as well as being a magistrate and later Provost of Inverness, a ship owner. He'd bought Easter Kessock - which appears to have included Craigton to the east - with a view to improving the ferry and then developing the village as a commuter suburb of Inverness. But there was a problem with the tenants of the estate: MacDonald had understood them to be ordinary agricultural tenants (meaning they could be removed relatively easily to make way for his redevelopment) but it turned out they were actually crofters (meaning they couldn't). In 1907, he sued for a refund of £2,500 (£260,000 in today's money) from the £19,000 (£2.1 million today) he'd paid for the estate. Colonel Baillie admitted liability but disputed the sum claimed as extravagant: the Court of Session agreed and awarded MacDonald just £700 (£70,000 today).

 

Looking west at North (Easter) Kessock. Note the steam ferry at the pier in the background.

But as annoying as the Easter Kessock settlement was, it was a drop in the bucket compared with the financial blow Col. Baillie had suffered two years earlier at the hands of his factor (Scottish word for land agent or steward who collects a landowner's rents), Donald Grant, solicitor in Grantown on Spey. When Grant died in October 1905, it emerged he'd been embezzling his clients' money and Baillie lost over £40,000 - an astonishing £4.2 million in today's money. (I assume Baillie didn't draw all the rents Grant collected on his behalf and instead left a credit balance to build up with him: treating him like a bank, in other words. Grant had also been the agent for the Royal Bank of Scotland in Grantown. Other clients lost another £40,000. What he did with all the money he embezzled is nowhere revealed.)

Just as well for Colonel Baillie that he was married to the heiress to half the Bass brewing fortune, the Hon. Nellie Bass. Upon the death of her father, Michael Bass, Lord Burton, in 1909, she as his only child became Baroness Burton in her own right. Reporting on that event, the London Daily Chronicle noted that she:- 

 

will, of course succeed to a large fortune; and she and Mr Baillie will in future be much more prominent in society. They have of late years lived very quietly at Dochfour House, Inverness-shire, or at Redcastle, their place in Ross-shire. Mr Baillie suffered heavy financial losses two or three years ago, in consequence of which he had to let Redcastle with its shootings. 

 

I'm not convinced it's true that Col. Baillie had to let Redcastle in direct consequence of his losses at the hands of Donald Grant. It seems to have been his practice to let Redcastle for the 'Scottish Season' (late summer, early autumn around the 'Glorious 12th' of August etc.) before and after the Grant affair (1905) and his wife coming into her fortune (1909). Often it was Dochfour which was let and the Baillies decamped to Redcastle and the practice of letting one of their houses for the season seems to have continued almost right up to WW2: it was at Redcastle that the Baillies entertained the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII and Duke of Windsor) in August 1923. There are a couple of references in the newspapers of the time to Redcastle having been their principal residence but how true that is, I can't tell. In Part 1 of this series, I described the castle as having been Lady Burton's home in the 1930s - perhaps it would have been more accurate to call it one of her homes.

 

Dochfour. Photo credit: Steven Severinghaus

As this is the story of Redcastle rather than the Baillies, I mustn't wander too far off topic but I couldn't resist this snippet in the Buchan Observer and East Aberdeenshire Advertiser in 1913:

Lady Burton and Mr Baillie, who usually let for the Highland Season their principal place, Dochfour, on Loch Ness, are themselves occupying it this year instead of Redcastle, Ross-shire, which has a tenant - Mr J. F. Robinson. Dochfour ... is only a part of Mr Baillie's domains which extend to about 90,000 acres. It is also not the most profitable portion, this being his Strathspey property, on which at Aviemore, Lady Burton runs a big hotel, built according to her own plans and tastes. To the alliance of Baillie and Bass the immense estates of the Laird of Dochfour owe a great deal (for they were heavily encumbered) and will owe much more.   

 

The hotel in question was the Aviemore Station Hotel, built in 1900 and which stood on the site where the awful 1960s Strathspey Hotel stands today until it was burnt down in 1950. Now one has to take these gossip column type pieces with a grain of salt (for example the Baillie property in Strathspey was Kingussie, not Aviemore) but they did have an involvement in the Aviemore Station Hotel. How deep it was financially, I don't know, but Col. Baillie was chairman of the hotel company and Lady Burton and her son the Hon. Evan became directors after his death which hints at a fairly substantial shareholding to be represented by a seat on the board. I don't know whether they were still involved when the hotel burnt down or whether Lady Burton had designed it as the article claims, although if she did, she had very good taste. Note the similarity of these dormerheads to the ones at Redcastle - coincidence?

Aviemore Station Hotel. 

As I mentioned in Part I, Lady Burton enjoyed the liferent (Scottish legal term for lifetime rent free use) of the Baillie estates following the death of her husband in 1931. She married a Major Melles the following year and lived until 1962 when she died aged 88. She was described in 1902 as having "unconventional manners". That was an allusion to the snobbery around those like the Basses whose money came from trade but about which Lady Burton made no bones at all: it was reported that she once scandalised the Marquis of Tullibardine at a ball by replying to his question that, no, she'd not heard of his ancestors who'd fought at the Battles of Culloden and Malplaquet (1709) because her ancestors had been bottle washers. Good for her.

Redcastle Mains steading, probably built during the Grant ownership (1790-1825). Photo credit: Bob Bain

Lady Burton had been predeceased by her eldest son, Brigadier the Hon. Evan Baillie who was killed during WW2, so was succeeded in her title and the Baillie estates by her grandson, Brig. Evan's son, Michael. He was the Lord Burton who was well known in Inverness-shire landowning circles (and beyond) who died in 2013 (his obit). His younger son, the Hon. Alex, now owns Dochfour Estate while Redcastle (including Tarradale) and Glen Shiel belong to a Baillie family trust called the Burton Property Trust. Which members of the family are the beneficiaries of that trust is not in the public domain and I don't know but I'm pleased to see that, having come in for some criticism of their stewardship of Redcastle (the castle, not the estate - see here for example), the trustees have in the last couple of years cleared the vegetation out of it and tidied up its surroundings. Compare the two photos below:-

2021 - Photo credit: Nick Sidle

 

2024 - Photo credit: Alan Simpson

 It’s still hard to believe somebody lived there less than 90 years ago, though!

Redcastle & the Lordship of Ardmannoch: the genealogy of a Highland estate - #3

Redcastle from the east. Photo credit: Paul Johnston

In Part 2, I explained what feuing was but just a quick reminder: a feu was a lease which lasted in perpetuity. Feus also had their own terminology as follows:-

landlord > superior

freehold > superiority

tenant > feuar

rent > feuduty

It was possible for a landowner to feu to one of his tenants the land he rented - convert his term limited lease to a perpetual feu, in other words - but more commonly landowners feued to outsiders over the heads of their tenants. That meant that, after a feu had been completed, the tenant paid his rent to the feuar and the feuar paid a feuduty to the landowner (the latter henceforth termed the superior). Whether to the tenant or an outsider, feus were normally granted for a one-off lump sum called a composition or grassum and an annual feuduty equal to the rent plus an increment called an augmentation. Although this is isn’t quite how the law viewed it, especially in the 16th century, and despite the analogy with leases, so far as the layperson in the 21st century is concerned, it is the feuar who was the owner of the land comprised in a feu and the superior’s was really a third party right over it to receive the feuduty.

Anyway, with that reminder about feuing in mind, in 1560, David Barton, a chaplain officiating at a side altar in Fortrose Cathedral, feued his benefice (endowment) consisting of Artafallie Farm on the Black Isle about a mile north west of Kessock to Rorie MacKenzie, the younger brother of Colin Cam (‘one eyed’) MacKenzie of Kintail, the 11th chief of clan MacKenzie. As was legally required, this feu was consented to by Queen Mary as patron of the benefice (i.e. the person with the right to nominate the next chaplain after the death of each incumbent). What composition Rorie paid doesn’t appear but the feuduty was £7 plus two muttons (sheep carcases), 4 kids and 2 dozen hens. That was the rent payable by the tenants of Artafallie to Barton with an augmentation of 6 shillings and 8 pence.

Kessock and the south east corner of the Black Isle with Artafallie Farm top left as seen on the OS 1 inch map of the 1890s: National Library of Scotland

In 1584, Rorie MacKenzie of Artafallie, as he was now styling himself, bought the Mill of Redcastle from John Stewart of Muirends (the price, unfortunately, is not discoverable). The mill was part of a feu which also included Kilcoy, Drumnamargie (now called Croftcrunie near the Tore Roundabout) and Muirends (near Balmaduthy) which Stewart’s grandfather Henry had taken from the Crown in 1511: it was the first feu from the Lordship of Ardmannoch. The proportion of its feuduty allocated to the Mill of Redcastle which Rorie of Artafallie would henceforth be responsible for was £2.

 

Although no mill is marked on any map now, the Mill of Redcastle's location can be inferred from the village of Milton immediately west of the castle. The pier was built for loading stone for building the Caledonian Canal taken from the nearby quarry (now disused). OS 6" map surveyed 1872. National Library of Scotland

Three years later, in 1587, Parliament passed an Act permitting King James VI to feu the annexed estate of the Crown (the Crown’s property - including the Earldom of Ross and Lordship of Ardmannoch - which the King could not dispose of without the consent of Parliament.) Parliamentary approval of each feu would no longer be required provided the feuduty included an augmentation to the current rent paid by the tenants. Prior to this, about a third of the Earldom of Ross and Lordship of Ardmannoch had already been feued in about a dozen separate feus but the King took immediate advantage of the new Act to feu all the rest of it to the Master of his Wardrobe, William Keith, in a single huge feu to be called the Barony of Delny after the farm on the north side of the Cromarty Firth between Alness and Tain which was to be its seat. Of the farms later to become part of Redcastle Estate, this feu included Garguston, Newton, Hilton, Lettoch and Easter Kessock (with its salmon fishery in the Beauly Firth and the ferry across to Inverness). Keith paid a composition (one off lump sum) of 1,000 merks (£666 13 s 6d) on which he received a 10% discount for reasons not stated. The annual feuduty was expressed as so much per property included in the feu which I've not totalled up but it included an augmentation of 30 merks (£20) over the current aggregate rent of the properties feued.

Extract from the 1587 Act permitting James VI to feu the annexed estate of the Crown or, as that was expressed in the jargon of the time, dissolving the annexed lands

In 1595, William Keith sold a big chunk of the Barony of Delny, including Garguston, Newton, Hilton, Lettoch and Easter Kessock (with fishery and ferry) to the 12th chief of the MacKenzies, Kenneth MacKenzie of Kintail: his father, Colin Cam, had died at Redcastle in 1594.

Then, in 1599, Kenneth of Kintail transferred Garguston, Newton, and Easter Kessock (and fishery and ferry) - but not Lettoch or Hilton - to his uncle, Rorie of Artafallie. The charter effecting that transfer was the first explicitly to include the castle of Redcastle itself which until now had remained in the hands of the Crown, un-feued. And in case you’re wondering how Kenneth and Rorie MacKenzie could effect a transfer of the Crown’s property between them like that, it needs a quick digression into the niceties of feudal conveyancing to explain: a feuar could not transfer his feu (or a part of it) to a purchaser directly. He had to resign it back to the Crown as the superior so that it (the Crown) could regrant the feu (or part) to the purchaser. (The Crown always co-operated in this provided it was paid a new composition (fee) over and above the feuduty for the current year.) If, as was normally the case, the purchaser was to hold the feu on exactly the same terms and conditions as the seller had done, the charter which the Crown granted the purchaser was called a Charter of Resignation. But if, as occasionally happened, there was to be some change in the feu agreed to by the Crown, it was called a Charter of Novodamus (‘new grant’). Thus, the charter Rorie MacKenzie of Artafallie got from the Crown in implement of the transfer of Garguston et al to him from his nephew, Kenneth of Kintail, was a Charter of Novodamus because the feu was enlarged to include the castle. The composition Rorie paid the Crown for it was £100 and the feuduty he became responsible for was £47 16 shillings and 12 pence; 2 chalders, 10 bolls and 2 firlots of bere (barley); 5 muttons, 3 marts, 12 capons and 16 hens; and 80 cartloads of peat. 

To summarise where we’ve got to by now, in 1599, Rorie MacKenzie of Artafallie is the owner (feuar) of: 

• Artafallie (a feu held of David Barton, the chaplain at a side altar in Fortrose Cathedral, then, after his death after the Reformation following which it no longer appointed new incumbents to such offices, the Crown: feuduty £7, 2 muttons, 4 kids, 2 dozen hens);

• Mill of Redcastle (part of a feu from the Lordship of Ardmannoch of Kilcoy and other properties held by the Stewarts of Muirends: feuduty to the Crown of £2)

• Redcastle, Garguston, Newton and Easter Kessock with its salmon fishery and ferry (part of the Barony of Delny which was a large part of the Lordship of Ardmannoch and Earldom of Ross feued to William Keith, a part of which he sold to Mackenzie of Kintail who in turn transferred a part of what he'd acquired from Keith to his nephew, Rorie of Artafallie: feuduty to the Crown of £47: 16: 12; 2 chalders, 10 bolls and 2 firlots of bere (barley); 5 muttons, 3 marts, 12 capons and 16 hens; and 80 cartloads of peat.)   

There are still three pieces of the jigsaw that make up the modern estate of Redcastle - Hilton, Lettoch and Coulmore - still to be acquired: I'll come to them presently. 

OS 1" map published 1967: National Library of Scotland

In 1608, Rorie MacKenzie of Artafallie transferred all of his properties except Artafallie to his heir, his eldest son Murdoch. He (Murdoch) styled himself ‘of Garguston’ initially but by 1623 he was calling himself ‘of Redcastle’ - I wonder if the change in style was prompted by the death of his father, Rorie, in 1615 (when Murdoch inherited Artafallie as well).

The 1608 transfer from Rorie to Murdoch was another novodamus because the charter from the Crown effecting it (here) contained the following new additional grant (approximate translation from the Latin):

The King, considering that Newton of Redcastle was one of the principal places of the Lordship of Ardmannoch, where there existed from time immemorial a public fair once a year called St. Andrew's Fair at St. Palmer's Chapel, ratifies the said fair; and grants of new a licence to hold a fair, to levy customs and toll-penny, to create bailiffs and deputies, to establish taverns and breweries, to establish inns and hostelries for the reception of foreigners and strangers, and to use other lawful merchandise for the supply of the inhabitants.

The word 'fair' is used there in its original sense of a market and refers to the fact that, in the 17th century, the right to trade was restricted to certain elites, typically the burgesses of a burgh having a monopoly in the territory around their burgh. Membership of that elite could only be added to by a grant from the King and it was quite common for the Crown to grant trading privileges along with land even if, in many cases, little came of it. It looks as if there were already market rights at Redcastle which perhaps had fallen into disuse and the King was trying to reinvigorate. What was in it for the MacKenzies of Artafallie was a cut of the profits ('levy customs and toll-penny'). Whether any inns, taverns or hostelries were established in pursuit of this grant, I don't know, although an inn at Milton of Redcastle is marked on the first edition (1872) of the OS 6" map (see above) but not on the second (1907)  

Nor do I know where St Palmer's Chapel was although the Origines Parochiales tell us (here): "At Redcastle, about half a mile west from the church [i.e. the parish church of the parish of Killearnan], stood a chapel dedicated to Saint Andrew, at which a fair was of old held about Lammas (1 August)". Newton of Redcastle, where the 1608 charter said the fair was, isn’t half a mile west of the parish church, though, but, anyway, St. Andrew’s Fair was still being held in 1839, on 16 July that year, at Milton of Redcastle. In 1845 it was moved to Beauly.

Inverness Courier, 3rd July 1839: British Newspaper Archive

From hereon, the story is of Redcastle Estate rather than the Lordship of Ardmannoch and Earldom of Ross it had been carved out of but there's one last anecdote about these ancient territories I can't resist before we leave them behind: in 1763, Drumderfit Farm (just south of Munlochy: it had also been part of the Barony of Delny, that big feu from Ardmannoch and Ross originally granted to William Keith in 1587) belonged to Thomas MacKenzie of Highfield (another part of the Barony of Delny just north of Muir of Ord). Highfield believed he'd been overcharged on his feuduty for Drumderfit so when he was sued for arrears by the Chamberlain of the Earldom of Ross, Sir Harry Munro of Foulis, he lodged a defence. (Drumderfit was actually part of the Lordship of Ardmannoch but its identity had become totally submerged in the Earldom by now.) 

Upon consulting his charters, it appeared that the Crown rent roll according to which Highfield was being charged contained an error by overstating his feuduty by two bolls, one firlot and two pecks of bere (barley). But a hornets' nest had been poked because the deeds also revealed that the rent roll seemed to be further mistaken in not including as part of the feuduty for Drumderfit 80 cartloads of peat to be delivered to Dingwall Castle each year. Foulis' position was that the extra bere over and above the amount stated in Highfield's charter he was being charged was, in fact, an amount in lieu of that peat. Highfield defended this by pointing out that no peat, or anything in lieu of it, could now be due since Dingwall Castle had long since ceased to exist and in any case there were no longer any peat mosses on Drumderfit for it to come from. Legal arguments were heard by Lord Auchinleck (father of James Boswell of Johnson and Boswell fame) and he remitted to the full bench of the Court of Session for a decision. It was that Highfield was due the peat (or an equivalent in lieu of it): it mattered not that the place it was intended to heat no longer existed nor that there was no longer any peat on the feu.

Extract from the decision in Sir Harry Monro of Foulis, Bt., His Majesty's Chamberlain of the Earldom of Ross v Thomas MacKenzie of Highfield

Back in the 17th century, Murdoch Mackenzie, 2nd of Redcastle (counting from his father Rorie even though he’d always styled himself ‘of Artafallie’) died around 1629 and was succeeded by his son, another Rorie. His initials and the date 1641 are carved on a plaque on the wall of the castle which was referred to in 1649 as his “new house”. That implies that it was this Rorie, the 3rd of Redcastle, who remodelled the castle to give it the final form we see today. 

The “new house” reference is in a contemporaneous account of the Covenanting Wars (the Scottish end of the English Civil War) called the Wardlaw Manuscript because it was written by the Minister of the Parish of Wardlaw, opposite Redcastle on the south side of the Beauly Firth and now called Kirkhill. I can never remember who the various factions were in these wars, who was on whose side or who or what they were fighting for at any given moment (did they even know themselves, I wonder?) but suffice to say for present purposes that, in February 1649, not long after King Charles I had been executed, there was a rising in favour of the exiled King Charles II in the north of Scotland in which Rorie MacKenzie of Redcastle took part. But after sundry manoeuvres including seizing the Covenanter stronghold of Inverness, the Royalists were routed by the Covenanters under Colonels Kerr and Strachan in May 1649 at Balvenie Castle on Speyside. Rorie was taken prisoner and sent first to the Bog o’ Gight (later called Gordon Castle) at Fochabers and then Edinburgh whence he was eventually released upon payment of a fine of 7,000 merks (about £400 sterling). In the meantime, Kerr and Strachan had laid siege to Redcastle and its laird’s homecoming was not a happy one: in the words of the Wardlaw Manuscript (here):-

Rory Reedcastell, who, while he was prisoner at Bogg Castle, his own new strong house of Redcastle kept out against the troopes [i.e the Covenanters] by a madd crew, one Lieutenant John M’klain was shot dead out at a window, for which in a rage they brunt the castle to ashes, with all the good furnitur, two of the defendants shot at the post, his own 2d sone Kenneth the flour [of] all his ofspring by a fall off the wall top was braind dead; himselfe comming home, and seing all this dismall loss, with greefe and melancholy dyed of a malignant fever, lying in a killbarn, haveing no other lodging left him. Of all these cross casualties I myselfe was eye witness.

Alexander MacKenzie’s ‘History of the MacKenzies’ says (here) that the walls of Redcastle were razed to the ground on this occasion but I wonder if that’s correct because the Wardlaw Manuscript and another contemporary account, the Ardintoul Manuscript (named after the home on Loch Alsh in Wester Ross of its author, the Rev. John MacRae: see here) say only that it was burnt which could, of course, have left the walls standing with just the woodwork of floors and roof reduced to ashes. On the other hand, Rorie’s 1641 date and initials stone could have been reincorporated in a complete rebuild of the castle.

Photo credit: David Geddes

‘History of the MacKenzies’ also says (here) that Rorie, 3rd of Redcastle, was still alive 40 years later in 1690 when he exchanged land with MacKenzie of Glenmarksie. But that can’t be right either because, apart from the implication in the quotation from the Wardlaw Manuscript that he died in the immediate aftermath of the burning of the castle in 1649, he must have been dead by 1662 at the latest because in that year his eldest son, Colin, was served as his heir: see here. Service of heirs was part of the procedure whereby an heir made up title to his ancestor’s property and it was not uncommon for it not to happen until many years - and sometimes several generations - after the ancestor’s death. 

Anyway, in so far as ‘History’ can be relied on (and it also appears to be mistaken about the name of Rorie 3rd’s second son which it says was Alexander while Wardlaw says (above) it was Kenneth), Colin MacKenzie, 4th of Redcastle, was “a very prudent man and amassed a large fortune”. That no doubt allowed him to restore the castle and also buy Coulmore in 1678 from the Roses of Kilravock. They had acquired it in 1485 from a family called Hunter and Coulmore wasn’t a feu, it was what was called a ‘ward holding’ in the Lordship of Ardmannoch. These were generally of much greater antiquity than feus and meant that the owner (‘ward vassal’) didn’t have to pay the Crown as feudal superior any annual duty while he was alive, only in the period between the death of an ancestor and his heir being served, which a ward vassal was not allowed to do unless he was at least 21 years of age. Ward vassals also had to make a payment to their feudal superior upon their (the vassals) marrying, which feuars didn’t have to do.

Coulmore Farm today looking west up the Beauly Firth. Photo credit: Lynden Schofield

And this is as good a place as any to admit that I don’t know how or when the MacKenzies of Redcastle acquired the last two farms comprised in the modern estate, Hilton and Lettoch. Sadly, the primary sources  which enable one to follow changes of landownership which can be consulted online (such as the Register of the Great Seal which contains grants of land by the Crown and Charters of Resignation and Novodamus etc.) peter out in the second half of the 17th century. The last appearance of Hilton and Lettoch in the online sources is in 1681 when they still belonged to the Earl of Seaforth (as the MacKenzies of Kintail had been ennobled in 1623): see here (no. 138) in which Lettoch is referred to by the English translation of its name Easter and Wester Half Davachs. So presumably Redcastle acquired Hilton and Lettoch from Seaforth at some point after 1681.

According to ‘History of the MacKenzies’, Colin 4th of Redcastle was “killed at Killearnan” (no details of that given) in 1704 when he was succeeded by his eldest son, another Rorie known as Ruairi Dearg, Gaelic for ‘Red Rorie’. There’s no sign of his having been involved in the 1715-16 Jacobite Rebellion which was the downfall of his chief, William, 5th Earl of Seaforth, who forfeited his title and estates for his involvement. There followed two more Rories of Redcastle - Ruairi Mor (‘Big Rorie’ 1725-51 - there's a story (here) that he was about to join the 1745-46 Rebellion when his wife 'accidentally' spilt boiling water down his boot which kept him at home) and Ruairi Ban (‘Fair haired Rorie’, 1751-85) - until we arrive at the penultimate and most notorious laird of Redcastle, Captain Kenneth MacKenzie. 

After a period in the Seaforth Highlanders, in 1781 (before he’d inherited the estate), Kenneth raised an independent company for service in the British Army. Hoping to gain glory and prize money (the value of captured enemy military materiel) in the American War of Independence, he was appalled, first, to find his recruits poached to serve in other units and replaced by convicts who’d agreed to join the army in commutation of their sentences and, then, to be dispatched to guard British slave trading forts on the Gold Coast of West Africa (now Ghana). Kenneth seems to have been a pretty disreputable character and his temper didn’t improve in Africa. Possibly deranged by the tropical climate so deleterious to the health of Europeans in these days, he treated his men and the local Africans abominably but the nadir was firing a cannon at one of his men who’d deserted. That was something that couldn’t be overlooked even by the harsher standards of the 18th century and MacKenzie was sent home in 1783 to stand trial for murder. He was convicted but pardoned in 1785 after a year in jail. He then went and joined the Russian army and was eventually killed in a duel in Constantinople in 1789. You can read all about the extraordinary career of Captain Kenneth MacKenzie, briefly the 8th of Redcastle, here (start at Chapter 5, ‘Africa’).

Captain Kenneth MacKenzie of Redcastle is bottom left in this portrait by Edinburgh caricaturist John Kay. This was drawn in 1786 between MacKenzie's release from prison and his joining the Russian Army. Picture credit: British Museum

Captain Kenneth’s father, Ruairi Ban, 7th of Redcastle, had been popular - at his funeral in 1785, the road from Kessock to Redcastle had been lined on either side not only by his own tenants but those of other nearby estates - but profligate. His egregious son ran up further debt in the course of his disastrous military career and put the estate on the market after he was released from prison but it was unsold at his death in 1789. Upon the accession of his son, Roderick, the 9th and last MacKenzie of Redcastle, therefore, his creditors forced the issue by bringing Redcastle to sale under a judicial process applicable to the estates of debtors who were “bankrupt and utterly insolvent”. This process was called ‘ranking and sale’ because it involved ranking the respective creditors’ claims on an estate as well as forcing its sale. An advert in the Caledonian Mercury advertised that Redcastle estate was to be sold at a roup (Scottish word for auction pronounced ‘roop’) to be held in Parliament House in Edinburgh on 25 June 1790. 

 

And at this point, I'll break and conclude the history of Redcastle in a final post.

 

Photo credit: arjayempee