Aikenway Castle

Aikenway Castle consists of the scant remains of a possible tower house, hall and courtyard built on a narrow promontory enclosed by a loop in the River Spey. The site is separated from other higher ground by a narrow causeway which is clearly artificial although the date is unknown – it could be a medieval feature or 18th century landscaping. The ruin is badly overgrown with bracken and undergrowth – and the landowner has erected a sign indicating they do not wish the public to visit. The principal extant masonry is a partial staircase, but the outlines of a perimeter wall surrounding the site and a large rectangular hall can be made out clearly beneath grass, soil and probably contains the fallen masonry of walling. Outside this, and before the castle site is reached, is a ruined cottage which may well have been built from masonry taken from the ruins.

The lands of Aikenway were granted to the church in the 13th century, and the church appears to have used the Leslie lords – and later earls – of Rothes to look after it for them as patrons of the nearby hospital of St Nicholas, which the profits of the lands were supposed to support. By 1530 the hospital appears to have vanished, and Aikenway was held by the Leslies, and a manorial centre had been built by the end of the century, with a small tower soon afterwards. It was sold by the Leslies in 1711, and the buildings were tenanted until they were replaced by farms in the 19th century. By the 1870s there was very little left.

HES Canmore Database entry