Auchanachie Castle

Auchanachie Castle is a modest pink-harled tower house of the late 16th century extended in the 17th and now occupied as a private home. It is built on a modest rise overlooking the Burn of Cairnie, a tributary of the River Isla, and cannot be seen from public roads. The oldest part of the building is a square tower at the south-western corner, three storeys tall with a vaulted cellar. On the eastern side, and extending to the north is a long accommodation block provided with a massive chimney on the western side, and connected to the old tower with a quarter-round tower crowned with battlements which clearly contains the stairs. This building is two storeys tall, and has a doorway roughly in the centre surmounted by a carved stone bearing the legend “FROM.OUR.ENEMIES DEFENDE.US.O.CHRIST” with the date 1594. A smaller scale, and presumably later, extension sits at the northern end of this building. The western side of the old tower has no windows, and the extension on this side is a single storey tall. From this side it can be seen that the old tower is built on slightly higher ground than the rest, and also that the western side of the old tower has no windows either.

The history of Auchanachie is somewhat fragmentary, particularly the early history. The first mention is in 1527, when one William Gordon held the lands of Avochie and those of Auchanachie, but the old tower may well predate this. Subsequently the lands of Auchanachie remained in the hands of descendants of this man, often changing hands when one family or another died out. Detailed examination of the family history is plagued by the romantic ballad. It is probable that the lands were granted to Thomas Gordon, brother of Adam de Gordon, and better known as Tam o’Ruthven. His castle at Daugh is long gone, but the site is only a short distance to the east, and Thomas was followed by four generations taking the designation “of Daugh”  before the male line ended in the mid 16th century. It could be that the old tower was founded by one of these generations, and the lands of Auchanachie were exchanged or sold to the Avochie Gordons, distant cousins descended from Thomas’ brother, John of Scurdargue. The main thing that is known about them is much later, however, and relates to a well-recorded succession dispute in the late 18th century, giving a detailed family tree of the Auchanachie Gordons going back to the mid 17th century. In 1801 the estate reverted to the hands of the Duke of Gordon as the result of a 57 year old wadset (mortgage) which was never cleared.