Page:The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth century (1887) - Volume 2.djvu/110

FOURTH PERIOD TOWIE CASTLE TOWIE CASTLE, ABERDEENSHIRE. A fragment of a square tower, and a vaulted cellar some distance from it, are all that remain of this castle, rendered famous by the dreadful tragedy commemorated in the ballad of " Edom o' Gordon " (see Balvaird, vol. i. p. 337). The castle was built by the Forbeses of Brux. It is finely situated at a bend of the river Don, near the parish church of Towie. In 1571 it was attacked and burned by Adam Gordon, brother of the Earl of Huntly, when the lady of the house and her children and servants, twenty-seven in number, all perished in the flames. It seems to have been built on the L plan (Fig. 559). The staircase to the upper floors, of which only a corbelled fragment remains, was fitted into the re- entering angle (Fig. 560). As the build- ing must have been erected in the sixteenth century, before the above date, it presents an early example of the FIG. 560. Towie Castle. View from the North- West. label moulding pattern in the corbels of the turrets, which afterwards became so common in Aberdeenshire. It is now the property of Henry Lumsden, Esq. of Auchendoir.