A Highland paradise Balmoral Castle, Scotland A home of Her Majesty The Queen The product of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s enthusiasm for the Highlands, Balmoral remains a much- loved home of the Royal Family. Mary Miers looks at the history of the castle and its role as a sporting estate Photographs by Paul Barker enjoying all the activities that have come to identify the royal Highland holiday—picnic- ing and excursions into the hills, shooting, dancing, attending Highland games and listening to piping. three years later, they were back, sailing from osborne up the west coast to tour the islands and then spending a month at the Marquis of abercorn’s ardverikie estate on Loch Laggan, where albert first donned a kilt, Landseer was a guest and they got their first prolonged taste of the infamous Highland weather. It did not put them off; indeed, the royal love of remote, cold places, and their stamina for enduring the elements and the dis- comforts of long outdoor expeditions, is legendary. earlier tourists had come north to observe the sublime; the royal Family relished the full physical experience, get- ting out into the wilds and pitting them- selves against the elements. as osborne neared completion on the Isle of Wight, Victoria and albert set their hearts Fig 3: The castle drawing room in 1857, one of 11 interior views by James Roberts on acquiring a Highland holiday home. and then, a fortuitous accident occurred: the route, to be greeted by a pageant of piping, included the neighbouring estates of Mar. Hon sir robert Gordon, who had taken bonfires, fireworks, wild dancing and waving sir robert Gordon, the 4th earl’s tenant, a long lease of Balmoral from earl Fife in villagers wearing full Highland dress. transformed Balmoral into a sporting 1830, choked on a fishbone one october old Balmoral Castle had begun life as estate. He cleared Glen Gelder to create morning in 1847 and died, leaving the prop- a small towerhouse built by the Gordons of a deer forest and, in 1834, engaged the erty in need of a new tenant. the lease abergeldie, Deeside landowners who acquired aberdeen city architect John smith to devolved on his brother, the future Prime the property in 1486. In the mid 17th century, enlarge the old towerhouse in a scots tudor Minister Lord aberdeen, who sent Victoria the estate passed to a cadet branch of the style redolent of William Burn (Fig 8). and albert enticing watercolours by James Farquharsons of Invercauld, but their Jaco- ‘small but pretty’ was the Queen’s opinion Fig 1 previous pages: The entrance front, with the dominating tower connected to the castle by a lower range of offices and Giles. the couple came here for the first bite activities resulted in heavy fines and, of the house, which, even with smith’s staff bedrooms. Fig 2 above: The Queen looks down on Balmoral from Craig Gowan to the south of the castle, in 1971 time in 1848, arriving as the new tenants in 1798, Balmoral was sold to James Duff, additions, was too modest in size for her The Royal Collection © byHer2012 Majesty Queen Elizabeth II/The Bridgeman Art Library way of 23 triumphal arches along the 2nd earl Fife, whose vast landholdings growing family, unceremonious and simple ➢ almoraL CastLe, with its ‘ossian’ Macpherson and sir Walter scott, traditions’. the adoption of tartan at Bal- attendant buildings and 50,000 whose nostalgic depictions of an ancient, moral, not only as a keynote of the interior acres of Upper Deeside, represents heroic culture untainted by industrialis- decoration, but also sartorially, with kilts the ultimate model of a working ation and romanticised by the failure of the and tweed jackets for the princes, keepers BHighland sporting estate. Uniquely docu- Jacobite uprisings captivated europe. as and gillies, and shawls for the Queen and mented in pen, paint and photograph, its role economic depression and enforced evictions her ladies in waiting, had a note of irony, today as the royal Family’s scottish holiday depopulated the glens, the Victorian tourist given its proscription after the ’Forty Five. home has remained relatively unchanged industry flourished, with its Highland games, Bagpipes, now embraced by the royals as since 1848, when Queen Victoria and Prince colourful costumes and pageantry. For a stirring enhancement to the Highland albert first came here and fell in love with the sportsmen, too, the Highlands were a new- experience, had also been proscribed by the wooded strath, its wild encircling hills and found paradise and, by the 1840s, many Queen’s ancestor as instruments of war. heather moorland. Balmoral offered the young native lairds were selling or letting their lands But we should remember that, in spite of couple a private refuge far from official life as sporting estates as growing numbers the recent vicissitudes of Highland history, —a family holiday home where they could headed north for the seasonal migration. the enchantment was far from one-sided. recuperate from the trials of public duty the coming of the railway, the invention of on their first visit to scotland in 1842, the and enjoy outdoor sports and other pursuits photography and the widespread success royal couple was given an ecstatic welcome, in a landscape that reminded them of of literary and artistic works contributed as colourful as that orchestrated by scott switzerland and albert’s native thuringia. to the dramatic transformation: the for George IV’s scottish ‘jaunt’ in 1822. But it would also contribute a significant Highlands had become ‘all the rage’. taymouth Castle in Perthshire provided the chapter to the story of how the Victorian Much has been made of Victoria and climax of the tour, with the Marquess of perception of the Highlands transformed albert’s Celtic enthusiasms, not only for the Breadalbane’s castle being extravagantly the image of scotland in the 19th century. scenery—‘beautiful… severe & grand’— remodelled for the occasion. there were fire- the ‘discovery’ of the Highlands dates and the air—‘remarkably pure and light’ works, bonfires, reels, boating on Loch tay back to the late 18th century, when literary- —but also for the people—‘more natural, to Gaelic rowing songs, a Grand Ball and and artistic-minded travellers came north & marked by that honesty & simplicity piping at every meal, all enacted by clansmen in search of the sublime. the enthusiasm which always distinguishes the inhabitants ‘plaided and plumed in their tartan array’. of these early romantics coincided with the of mountainous countries’ (the Queen they returned north in 1844, borrowing rise of the cult of the Picturesque and the turned a blind eye to her servants’ exces- Blair Castle, where they lived ‘a somewhat Lichfield/Getty Images success of writers and poets such as James sive drinking habits)—and their ‘historical primitive, yet romantic, mountain life’, Fig 4: Prince Albert and Queen Victoria are depicted ascending Lochnagar in Morning in the Highlands by Carl Haag, 1853 48 Country Life, March 7, 2012 www.countrylife.co.uk www.countrylife.co.uk Country Life, March 7, 2012 49 Fig 5 facing page: The castle entrance front with its porte cochère. Fig 6 above: Returning from the hill through Ballochbuie though they liked their holidays to be (the and managing the entire project with there is no doubting the prestige earl of Malmesbury complained of having methodical precision. He was also a tireless Balmoral brought to the Baronial revival in to write his dispatches on his bed). improver of the rundown property, super- scotland that spawned europe’s although they carried out various building intending the design and building of model first truly nationalist style. projects as tenants, ownership was neces- estate buildings (Fig 14), landscaping and But, in some ways, it has sary before they could embark on creating planting, the laying out of formal gardens more in common with a more suitable home, and Prince albert and diversion of the public road. a different tradition that was determined that ‘we ought not to let the intelligent, technical-minded prince had emerged on Deeside Balmoral slip away from us’. Negotiations had been brought up in an atmosphere of several decades to buy the estate were protracted. the price German romanticism at schloss rosenau earlier for a more was high and a private bill had to be passed in Coburg, which his father had restored and informal, picturesque owing to certain legal complications. Having Gothicised, and he was deeply interested genre of Highland already acquired the 6,000-acre Birkhall in the arts and architecture. at Balmoral, shooting lodge whose estate for the Prince of Wales and the lease however, he was mindful of economy and very essence was the of 14,000-acre abergeldie, they finally took ‘very much afraid of getting out of the rough landscape that was its possession of Balmoral in autumn 1852, character of a Highland residence’. the raison d’être. Balmoral, paying £31,500 for 11,000 acres. resulting composition, which incorporates with its long, low, carefully the Queen had just received ‘a very hand- elements of the old castle, is a fairly con- orientated ranges, connects some fortune [that] had inexplicably been servative essay—more a hybrid of William with the outdoors in a way bequeathed to me by a Mr John Camden Burn’s 1830s scots tudor than full-blooded that a Baronial pile rarely Nield. He knew I would not squander it’. scottish Baronial (Fig 5). the scots detail does (Fig 2). the great, a scheme conceived with J. & W. smith is limited, the main windows mullioned and keep-like tower (Fig 1), in 1848 to remodel the old castle was transomed, which albert favoured over which hints so readily at abandoned and Prince albert summoned sashes ‘in point of architectural effect’, a castle, is, in fact, not William smith to help him design a new stipulating that they should be large and part of the main house ➢ house.