Auchindoun Castle

The impressive earthworks around the present castle suggest that an earlier castle or fort could have occupied the site, but we don't know for sure. Tradition has it that the stronghold we see today was built in the 1400s by Thomas Cochrane, a favourite of King James III.

Despite its beautiful location, there have been some grim chapters in Auchindoun's story.

In 1479, Cochrane was employed by the king to control the region after the execution of John, Earl of Mar, who was the king’s brother. But a mere three years later Cochrane was hanged by James’s nobles during a plot to unseat the king.

By the early 1500s, the castle was owned by the Ogilvy family. Records from 1509 show that Sir James Ogilvy granted his nephew Alexander ‘the mains Auchindoun with its castle, fortalice and castle hill’. Alexander’s son sold the castle to Sir Adam Gordon in 1594.

In 1571 a party of Gordons from Auchindoun attacked and burnt nearby Corgarff Castle, killing all of its occupants. This brutality was a product of a feud between the Gordon and Forbes clans. The act is retold in the famous ballad Edom o Gordon,

William Mackintosh, seeking vengeance, inflicted the same fate on Auchindoun. He was beheaded for the crime, which inspired another the traditional song, The Burning of Auchindoun.

The castle was back in Ogilvy hands by 1594, but lay derelict by 1725. William Duff of Braco was given permission to use stone from the abandoned castle to construct Balvenie House in nearby Dufftown.