Airlie Castle
is a mansion house in the parish of Airlie, Angus, near the
junction of the Isla and Melgund rivers, west of Kirriemuir,
Angus, Scotland.
King James I of
Scotland granted lands to Walter Ogilvy of Lintrathen, Lord High
Treasurer of Scotland, in 1432. Walter Ogilvy then built the
castle at the confluence of the River Isla and the Melgam Water.
It sits on a raised position with a steep 400ft drop to the
rivers below. A moat on the eastern approach further protected
the castle. It became a stronghold and chief residence of the
Ogilvies.
The castle
consisted of a rectangular courtyard with walls three meters
thick. The east wall of the original courtyard still stands. An
entrance gateway that now has a square tower on it sits at the
north end of this wall, though the tower was built later than
the original courtyard.
In 1639 at York
Charles I created James Ogilvy the 1st Earl of Airlie. James
refused to sign the National Covenant. Furthermore, during the
Wars of the Three Kingdoms the Ogilvies supported King Charles I
and the Royalist cause. Parliamentarian troops under the command
of Archibald Campbell, 8th Earl of Argyll destroyed the castle
in 1640; the ballad "The Bonnie Hoose o' Airlie" describes the
incident. Campbell also burnt the Ogilvies's castles at Craig
and Forter.
The Ogilvies did
not rebuild Airlie Castle. James Ogilvy (d. 1731), grandson of
the first Earl, took part in the Jacobite rising of 1715 and was
attainted; consequently on his father's death in 1717 he was not
allowed to succeed to the earldom, although he was pardoned in
1725. George II confiscated the castle.
In 1778 David
Ogilvy too received a pardon and he returned to Scotland from
exile in Versailles. He had a new mansion built between 1792 and
1793 that incorporated the parts of the Castle that were still
standing.
The tune was
written by
George Bell, leader of George Bell’s Scottish Dance Band
which was formed in the late 1960s.
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