Aldie Castle

Aldie Castle is a privately occupied tower house and mansion set in private lands overlooking the Pow Burn west of Loch Leven. It can be made out at a distance from the public road running from Cleish to the A823, but the castle is over half a mile away from the road. It consists of a rectangular tower of three storeys and an attic, with an L-shaped extension to the south, creating a tiny walled courtyard in the centre, now covered with a glass roof. Three of the corners are crowned by round turrets, the south-west has a square caphouse. The extension is lower at two storeys and an attic, but the floors are clearly lower than those in the tower. The ground floor of the tower and the kitchen wing attached to the tower are vaulted, but the south-eastern extension is not. There is a doorway in the east gable at ground floor level (converted to a window), but this may not have been the original entrance; the alterations for the extensions have masked the likely location of a first floor doorway in the south wall ((there is a mural corridor almost the full length of the wall), and there is a winding stair serving all floors in the south-western corner of the tower, accessed from the extension. The whole of the first floor of the tower is taken up with the great hall, with the fireplace in the west gable, and another blocked up doorway above that on the ground floor. The second floor again appears to have been taken up with a single room, and the attic – but this is unlikely to have been the original layout.

The lands of Aldie were held by Gille Brigte. Earl of Strathearn, in the 1160s and were granted between 1194 and 1198 to Malcolm, son of the Earl of Fife, who had married Strathearn’s daughter Matilda. Malcolm and Matilda had no children, and Aldie returned to Strathearn. Between 1271 and 1296 they were granted by John, son of Malcolm de Moravia, to his brother William. William was married to a daughter of Earl Malise of Strathearn so it is not clear exactly how all this happened. A charter from December 1362 issued by King David II confirmed a grant from the earl of Fife to Walter Murray of Tullibardine of lands including Aldie. At about this time John Mercer, a burgess from Perth, married one of the Tullibardine daughters, and gained Aldie as a result. The Mercer family retained the estate into the 18th century, often through inheritance of sisters from the 17th century onwards, and by 1799 the castle was uninhabited and getting derelict. It is likely that the tower dates from the early 16th century, perhaps the years after Flodden where Henry Mercer of Aldie died, although the lower portions may predate this and have been a strong hall-house of sorts. Photographs on Canmore show the castle without windows, and with the roof collapsing in the 1920s. The castle was purchased after the Second World War and brought back into repair in the 1950s.

HES Canmore database entry