# Brodie Castle

castle in Moray, Scotland, UK

Moray, United Kingdom

Fortification. 1567 CE

## Story

• Brodie Castle is a Z-plan tower house north of Brodie in Moray, about three and a half miles west of Forres, with a sixteenth-century core and later wings.
• Alexander Brodie, twelfth of Brodie, is credited with the castle of 1567, or about 1566, after estates forfeited for rebellion against Mary, Queen of Scots, were restored.
• Lord Lewis Gordon burned the house in 1645, destroying early family records, and the Brodies later held the rebuilt castle against a threatened assault in 1715.
• William Burn began a Scots Baronial remodelling in 1824 that was left unfinished, and James Wylson carried the alterations on between about 1840 and 1852.
• The grounds keep an eighteenth-century formal landscape, a daffodil collection, and Rodney's Stone, a Pictish cross-slab moved to an entrance drive in the 1830s.
• A 2022 excavation found an unrecorded building, pottery that may be medieval, and bottles from the 1700s, and Ninian Brodie passed the castle to the National Trust for Scotland in 1978 and 1980.

## Visiting

The grounds are open daily, and the toilets are open from 09:00 to 17:00. The car park ticket is £5. Castle entry is for events only. On illuminated event days the estate closes at 4.30pm except to ticket-holders, and first admission is at 5pm.

## History

Brodie Castle is a Z-plan tower house north of Brodie in Moray, about three and a half miles west of Forres, later wrapped in a rose-coloured mansion. Alexander Brodie, the twelfth of Brodie, is credited with a castle of 1567, or of about 1566, after estates forfeited for his part in rebellion against Mary, Queen of Scots, were restored. A reading of the masonry also allows an older L-plan, made into the Z-plan by a south-west tower in the mid-sixteenth century, and one family account believes the tower may go back to 1430.

Clan Brodie is tied to the lands from the Middle Ages, with a traditional grant from Malcolm IV of Scotland around 1160 and a later thane, Malcolm, who died in 1285. Michael, son of Malcome, held the thanage in 1311 and received a confirming charter from Robert the Bruce. The early papers that might have settled those origins were burned in 1645.

Lord Lewis Gordon, later Lewis Gordon, 3rd Marquess of Huntly, set the house on fire in 1645 after Clan Brodie lost at the Battle of Auldearn during the royalist campaign of James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose. Accounts call the damage a partial burning, a sacking, and a burning down, while the old tower and plaster of 1635 to 1640 still stand. The fifteenth chief, an ardent covenanter, afterwards helped bring Charles II back from The Hague and refused Oliver Cromwell.

In 1715 the rebuilt castle was held against threats from Lord Huntley. Mary Sleigh laid out radiating avenues between 1730 and 1750, and debts led to a judicial sale in 1774, with the Earl of Fife returning the policies. William Burn began a Scots Baronial remodelling in 1824 that was left unfinished, and James Wylson carried the alterations on between about 1840 and 1852.

Rodney's Stone, a Pictish cross-slab whose ogham names Ethernan, stands by an entrance drive where it was placed in the 1830s. Ian Brodie established a daffodil collection that is called both a famous national planting of more than one hundred varieties and a collection whose return would raise a horticultural interest otherwise rated little. Ninian Brodie agreed in 1978 to pass the castle to the National Trust for Scotland, and the family handed it over in 1980.

A dig in September 2022 found what was believed to be an unrecorded demolished building, pottery that may be medieval, glass bottles from the 1700s, and cobble tracks and flooring. A dig in 2019 had found a ditch hoped to be a medieval enclosure. The house keeps seventeenth-century plaster, a library of more than six thousand volumes, and Dutch pictures, on a formal landscape cut by the railway in 1856.

## Photographs

- [Brodie Castle The original castle was built in 1567 by Clan Brodie but destroyed by fire in 1645 by Clan Gordon. It was greatly expanded in 1824 by the — JThomas](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Brodie_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1275673.jpg)
- [Brodie Castle. The seat of the Brodies for almost 1000 years, the castle is now in the care of the National Trust for Scotland. The present building dates from — Anne Burgess](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Brodie_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_13189.jpg)
- [A woodland walk at Brodie Castle — Elliott Simpson](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/A_woodland_walk_at_Brodie_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_476742.jpg)
- [An outbuilding at Brodie Castle According to the guide, the laundry was done in the outbuilding to keep the smell out of the castle. — Elliott Simpson](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/An_outbuilding_at_Brodie_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_476734.jpg)
- [Brodie Castle — Sarah Charlesworth](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Brodie_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_920609.jpg)
- [Brodie Castle This the ancestral home of the Brodies the castle is now in the care of the National Trust for Scotland. The present building dates from 1567 — ronnie leask](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Brodie_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_975265.jpg)
- [At Brodie Castle Station near Forres The road leading to Cloddymoor at the southern entrance to Brodie Castle (N.T. Scotland) at Brodie Castle Station - now — Dean Molyneaux](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/At_Brodie_Castle_Station_near_Forres_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1380986.jpg)
- [Access to Brodie Castle Estate From a junction of minor public roads. — Stanley Howe](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Access_to_Brodie_Castle_Estate_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1530161.jpg)
- [Brodie Castle Viewed from the SW. — Stanley Howe](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Brodie_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1530536.jpg)
- [Brodi Castle, Scotland — Mihael Grmek](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Brodie_Castle_01.jpg)

## Sources

- [Brodie Castle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brodie_Castle) — Wikipedia
- [Clan Brodie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clan_Brodie) — Wikipedia
- [Lewis Gordon, 3rd Marquess of Huntly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Gordon,_3rd_Marquess_of_Huntly) — Wikipedia
- [Malcolm IV of Scotland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_IV_of_Scotland) — Wikipedia
- [William Burn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Burn) — Wikipedia
- [Rodney's Stone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney%27s_Stone) — Wikipedia
- [Elizabeth Gordon, Duchess of Gordon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Gordon,_Duchess_of_Gordon) — Wikipedia
- [Scottish baronial architecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_baronial_architecture) — Wikipedia
- [Clan Gordon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clan_Gordon) — Wikipedia
- [Picts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picts) — Wikipedia
- [Z-plan castle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-plan_castle) — Wikipedia
- [James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Graham,_1st_Marquess_of_Montrose) — Wikipedia
- [Wars of the Three Kingdoms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wars_of_the_Three_Kingdoms) — Wikipedia
- [Battle of the Saintes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Saintes) — Wikipedia
- [Dyke, Moray](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyke,_Moray) — Wikipedia
- [Brodie Castle & Estate](https://www.nts.org.uk/visit/places/brodie-castle) — National Trust for Scotland
- [A long read](https://www.nts.org.uk/stories/a-long-read) — National Trust for Scotland
- [Brodie Castle listing](https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/LB2260) — Historic Environment Scotland
- [Brodie Castle designed landscape](https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/GDL00072) — Historic Environment Scotland
- [Brodie Castle building record MAB3048](https://her.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/Monument/MAB3048) — Aberdeenshire Council Historic Environment Record
- [Volunteers help archaeologists uncover history during excavations at Brodie Castle](https://www.forres-gazette.co.uk/news/volunteers-dig-for-history-at-brodie-castle-289956/) — Forres Gazette
- [Case Study 33: Rodney's Stone, Brodie Castle](https://scarf.scot/thematic/future-thinking-on-carved-stones-in-scotland/future-thinking-on-carved-stones-in-scotland-case-studies/case-study-rodneys-stone-brodie-castle-weaving-together-conservation-art-and-education/) — Scottish Archaeological Research Framework
- [Brodie Castle - geograph.org.uk - 1275673.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brodie_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1275673.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Brodie Castle - geograph.org.uk - 13189.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brodie_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_13189.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [A woodland walk at Brodie Castle - geograph.org.uk - 476742.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_woodland_walk_at_Brodie_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_476742.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [An outbuilding at Brodie Castle - geograph.org.uk - 476734.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:An_outbuilding_at_Brodie_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_476734.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Brodie Castle - geograph.org.uk - 920609.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brodie_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_920609.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Brodie Castle - geograph.org.uk - 975265.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brodie_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_975265.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [At Brodie Castle Station near Forres - geograph.org.uk - 1380986.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:At_Brodie_Castle_Station_near_Forres_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1380986.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Access to Brodie Castle Estate - geograph.org.uk - 1530161.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Access_to_Brodie_Castle_Estate_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1530161.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Brodie Castle - geograph.org.uk - 1530536.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brodie_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1530536.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Brodie Castle 01.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brodie_Castle_01.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons

## Detailed history

Brodie Castle stands north of the village of Brodie in Moray, about three and a half miles, or five and a half kilometres, west of Forres, and about six miles, or ten kilometres, east of Nairn. It sits on the north side of the road that links those towns, on a coastal plain that slopes gently toward the Moray Firth. From the top of the house the view runs north toward Caithness and south toward the Monadliath and the Grampian mountains, while woodland closes the view at ground level. The building is a tower house with two five-storey towers on opposing corners of a central block, later absorbed into a larger mansion. The walls are harled, with ashlar margins and dressings, and the roof is slate. The south front keeps the sixteenth-century tower at the west, with an earlier seventeenth-century addition, a cap-house, a crenellated corbelled wallhead, water spouts, and dormers with decorative gablets. The entrance sits in the re-entrant angle, where a stair turret rises from the first floor and ends in a slender conical roof. The eastern portion, of 1824 to 1852, has a wide five-bay garden front with projecting outer gables, hoodmoulded windows with mullions and transoms, canted windows, and shaped and crowstepped gables. A five-bay wing of one storey and an attic runs at right angles to the north-east.

The castle is listed in the highest category, with the date of listing given as 25 January 1971 and as 26 January 1971. A designed-landscape account instead calls the castle a category B listing. The policies were added to the inventory of gardens and designed landscapes on 30 June 1987, and also on 1 July 1987. They cover 287 acres, or 116 hectares, enclosed by woodland. The designed ground once ran farther south-west. It was reduced about 1755, when some land was sold, and in 1856 the Highland Railway cut through the eighteenth-century layout and fixed a new southern boundary that still holds. Brodie station, now disused, stands on that southern edge. The station served the village from 1857 to 1965. Forres, the market town and former royal burgh to the east, had a royal castle from at least 900 and became a royal burgh around 1140. The village of Brodie takes its name from the castle and from the lands of Clan Brodie. Dyke, about three quarters of a mile to the north-east, takes its name from a ditch or water drain, the Gaelic dìg. The present parish church there was built in 1781. An older East Church, of 1856, stands on land the Brodie family gave to the town.

In the time of the Picts this ground lay in the kingdom called Moravia, and later scholarship places the dominant Pictish kingdom of Fortriu in Moray rather than in southern Perthshire. The Roman name Pict, used from the end of the third century for unromanised people in northern Britain, may have been adopted by the people themselves only later, around the Verturian hegemony centred on the country about Inverness and Moray. Pictish art on cross-slabs combines animals, including the Pictish Beast, with the double disc and Z-rod, interlace, and Christian imagery. Ogham and Latin inscriptions appear on the stones, and many of the symbols have never been read as a script. Rodney's Stone, a cross-slab about two metres high, now stands close to the approach to the castle. It is a Class II stone: a cross on one face and symbols on the other. The symbol face has two fish monsters at the top, then a Pictish Beast, then a double disc and Z-rod. Another account of the same carvings speaks of an elephant, a fish monster, and dragons. The cross face has a cross and animals. Ogham runs on both sides and on the cross face. It is the longest Pictish inscription, and it is also called the longest known ogham in Scotland. Three inscriptions occupy two sides. Much of the lettering is weathered. The name of the Pictish saint Ethernan is read in it, written EDDARRNON.

The stone is a scheduled monument. The garden record also calls it a listed category B stone. It was found in the grounds of the old church of Dyke and Moy, and one account says it came to light while the foundations of the present church at Dyke were being dug. Its first site is unknown. Since it was made it has stood in at least four places. It was set up at Brodie beside the east drive, and its present position, beside one of the estate's picturesque entrance drives, dates from the 1830s, when antiquities were being placed in landscapes as objects for contemplation. It carries the name Rodney for the victory of Admiral Sir George Rodney over the French fleet in 1782 off Dominica, a fight also called the Battle of the Saintes, fought from 9 to 12 April 1782, in which Rodney defeated the fleet of François Joseph Paul de Grasse and stopped a planned invasion of Jamaica. Another explanation is that the stone was named for a rat catcher and grave digger from Dyke who had a similar name. In 2005 a winter storm blew down a spruce plantation that had been planted to within ten metres of the monument and destroyed a timber shelter that had covered the stone since the 1970s. The sandstone was judged resilient enough to remain without a new shelter if the climate did not change. A three-dimensional laser scan was made as a record and as a baseline for erosion. Native broadleaved trees were replanted farther off. A dried willow windbreak, made by Jon Warnes, echoed the curves of the Pictish beasts, and local schoolchildren wove fifty willow beasts to lead a path to the stone. The space was used for storytelling and for a first performance of fiddle music composed for the monument by Paul Anderson, with a country dance being set to that music.

The lands were known before the sixteenth century as Brothie, explained as mire or ditch, and in Saxon as dyke. The ditch running toward Dyke has been offered as the origin of the name Brodie, said to have been used first by the tenth laird, Alexander. Other proposals, all of them suppositions, derive Brodie from a little ridge, a brow, or a precipice; from the old Irish broth, a ditch or mire; from brothach, a muddy place; from Brodha, a point, a spot, or a level piece of land; from a thirteenth-century knight Guy de Brothie in a French noble dictionary; or from the Pictish royal name Brude, Bruide, or Bridei. Early spellings include Brochy, Brothy, Brothie, Brothu, and Brode. It is uncertain whether the family took the name from the lands or the lands from the family. Part of the lands were Temple Lands of the Knights Templar. They were governed by a toiseach, later called a thane. The family of Clan Brodie is widely accepted to have been associated with this ground since about 1160, when it is believed that King Malcolm IV gave the lands for loyalty. Another account says the family has been settled here since the eleventh or twelfth century, and another that the association has lasted more than seven hundred years.

Malcolm IV of Scotland, called the Maiden, was born between 23 April and 24 May 1141 and died at Jedburgh on 9 December 1165, aged twenty-four. He became king in 1153 on the death of his grandfather David I, and he was inaugurated at Scone on 27 May 1153 at the age of twelve. Rivals had support in the province of Moray, among them Domnall mac Uilleim. In 1159 Malcolm served Henry II of England at the siege of Toulouse and was knighted. He returned in 1160 and faced a rebellion of six earls at Perth, led by Ferchar, mormaer of Strathearn. Scottish sources say that a revolt in Moray then brought him north, and that he removed the men of Moray from the land of their birth and scattered them through other districts. The traditional Brodie grant sits in that same year, 1160. It is a belief about loyalty to the king, not a charter in his own annals. A different Malcolm appears in the later record of the house. The castle of 1567 is ascribed to Alexander Brodie, twelfth of Brodie, descended from Malcolm, thane of Brodie, who died in 1285. The clan account, working after the loss of its early papers, names MacBeth, thane of Dyke, in 1262, and then, in 1311, Michael, son of Malcome, thane of Brothie and Dyke. It is unclear whether MacBeth and Michael were of one line. The chiefs claim descent from that Malcome as first chief and thane. Michael received a charter from Robert the Bruce confirming the lands and saying that he held the thanage by succession from his paternal ancestors. The same account presumes a Pictish ancestry, the people called locally the ancient Moravienses, and records the suggestion of the historian Ian Grimble that the Brodies were an important Pictish family, perhaps linked to the male line of the Pictish kings. There is enough Pictish settlement around Brodie for that to be treated as one reasonable explanation, and no more than that.

The early chiefs enter recorded conflicts in the fifteenth century. Johne of Brode of that Ilk, the seventh chief, helped Clan Mackenzie beat Clan MacDonald at the Battle of Blar-na-Pairc in 1466, and a bond of manrent followed. Clan Brodie then joined the royal army under the Earl of Atholl against Aonghas Óg, the rebel son of the Lord of the Isles, and in 1481 Aonghas Óg defeated that army at Lagabraad, where 517 of the royal force were killed. Thomame Brodye, the eleventh chief, was killed against the English at the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh. In 1550 Alexander, called the rebel, the twelfth chief, with his own men and with help from the Dunbars and the Hays, attacked Clan Cumming at Altyre and sought to kill Alexander Cumming of Altyre. He was put to the horn for failing to appear on a charge of waylaying, and he was pardoned the next year. In 1562 the same Alexander joined Clan Gordon and George Gordon, fourth Earl of Huntly, in rebellion against Mary, Queen of Scots. They were defeated at the Battle of Corrichie. Huntly died. Brodie escaped, was denounced a rebel, and had his estates forfeited. For four years he was an outlaw. In 1566 the queen, having forgiven Clan Gordon, included him in the warrant that lifted the sentence and restored the possessions.

The tower is dated to 1567, to about 1567, and to about 1566. One account says Alexander built the core about 1566 after the lands came back to him. Another says the first castle was built around 1566 and that its remains are the south-west tower. The clan history calls it a Z-plan tower house of the mid-sixteenth century, believes the tower itself may go back to 1430, and dates the newest parts to 1820–30. A close reading of the masonry offers a more complicated sequence. Several episodes of building and repair show on the north-east tower, which may have begun as part of an L-plan house. The east wall of that tower continues into the east wall of the adjoining hall without a clear change of build, so those two parts are likely of one date. On that reading, an L-plan was turned into the present Z-plan in the mid-sixteenth century by the addition of the south-west tower. A Z-plan, as used in Scotland and in England, is a strong rectangular tower with smaller towers on diagonally opposite corners. Brodie is named among the prominent examples, with Castle Menzies, Glenbuchat, Castle Fraser, Claypotts, and Hatton. The older Scottish baronial houses of the later sixteenth century kept high roofs, towers, and turrets after gunpowder had made thin high walls a poor defence, because those forms still marked rank. Claypotts, of 1569 to 1588, is the usual illustration of the Z-plan in that generation. Brodie's first structure is described as a standard Z-plan with square towers at the south-west and the north-east, possibly incorporating earlier work. The south tower is thought to be part of an original keep. The south-west tower and the main block now occupy the west half of the south front. Early in the seventeenth century a west wing was added. In the nineteenth century a two-bayed east wing was built beyond the main block.

Inside, the red drawing room was the first-floor hall of the 1567 castle. It was redecorated in the 1820s by William Burn, and it now has a groined plaster ceiling and an ornate panelled chimneypiece whose carved figures rise to the ceiling. A clock in that room marks the hour by playing one of thirteen tunes. The best bedchamber, called the laird's room, has a seventeenth-century plaster frieze and corner motifs, and a lintel dated 1602. The blue sitting room has a vaulted ceiling with embossed plaster motifs and strapwork of 1635 to 1640. Alexander is said to have commissioned the fine plaster ceilings, and those ceilings are said to have survived the sacking of 1645. The dining room, in the former first-floor hall of the seventeenth-century wing, has a late seventeenth-century embossed ceiling that was grained and stained about 1825, with panelling and doors grained as well.

The fire belongs to the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the conflicts fought from 1639 to 1653 in England, Scotland, and Ireland under Charles I. They began when Scottish Covenanters resisted his religious changes, and they grew into civil war between Royalists and the king's opponents. James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose, signed the National Covenant and at first fought for it, then turned to Charles I. From 1644 to 1646 he campaigned in Scotland for the king. His victories included the Battle of Auldearn in 1645. Clan Brodie fought there in the covenanter army and lost. Cavalry of Clan Gordon fought on the royalist side at Auldearn and helped defeat the covenanters of Lord Seaforth. At the Battle of Alford the same year, George Gordon, eldest son of the second Marquess of Huntly, was killed. After Auldearn, Clan Gordon sacked Brodie Castle and besieged Lethen House. The Brodies of Lethen held that house for twelve weeks.

The man who burned Brodie is Lewis Gordon, 3rd Marquess of Huntly, called Lord Lewis Gordon in 1645, before he held the title. He was born about 1626, the third son of George Gordon, second Marquess of Huntly, while his father commanded the Garde Écossaise, and he was named for Louis XIII. His grandfather raised him until he was ten. As a child he stole jewels and tried to take ship for Holland. At thirteen, in the First Bishops' War, he left Gordon Castle, raised a brigade from his father's estates, and saw his Highlanders scatter under cannon at Megray Hill. He then served in France as an ordinary pikeman, fought on both sides in England, and served with the covenanters of his uncle, the Earl of Argyll. At sixteen he married Mary Grant, who had been the fiancée of his elder brother, Viscount Aboyne. In 1644, at the Battle of Aberdeen, Gordons fought on both sides, and Lord Lewis led men for the Covenanters while Sir Nathaniel Gordon led men for the Royalists. In 1645 he attacked Brodie, set it on fire, and destroyed archives and documents that had recorded the origins of Clan Brodie. One account calls the damage a partial burning. Another says the castle was plundered and burned. Another says it was burnt down. The sixteenth-century tower still stands, and the plaster is said to have survived, so the house was not erased. In 1646 he took a notable part in his father's occupation of Aberdeen. He later went into exile in France, succeeded his brother and his father as Earl of Enzie and as marquess, and was allowed back in 1651 although he would not conform to the Presbyterian Church and was probably a Roman Catholic. He died at twenty-six or twenty-seven, leaving a widow, three daughters, and a son who became the first Duke of Gordon. A later Lord Lewis Gordon, brother of the third Duke, is a different man. That later Lewis raised Jacobite regiments in 1745. He is not the burner of 1645.

Alexander, called the good, Lord Brodie of Brodie, the fifteenth chief, was an ardent covenanter and presbyterian. His faith is tied to destruction at Elgin Cathedral and to its paintings. He judged witchcraft trials and sentenced at least two women to death. He was a commissioner for the apprehension of Jesuits and Catholic priests and for the plantation of kirks. He sat on the committees of war for Elgin, Nairn, Forres, and Inverness, and on committees of estates, of the protection of religion, and of excise. He was elected commissary-general to the army. He went twice to The Hague to seek the return of the exiled Charles II, in 1649 and again with a larger party in 1650, and he came back with the king. Oliver Cromwell wanted him for the regime that followed the king's execution and the founding of the Commonwealth. Lord Brodie refused a summons to discuss a union of Scotland and England. His diary says that he had met with the lion and the bear before, but that this was the Goliath, and that the strongest temptation came last. A royalist plot to capture him in 1650 failed. Alexander Brodie of Lethen went south with a troop and commanded it with some credit at the Battle of Dunbar in 1650, a covenanter defeat.

In the Jacobite rising of 1715 the family sided with the government. James Brodie of Brodie, the eighteenth chief, refused to give up his horse and his arms to Lord Huntley. Huntley threatened military execution: battering down the house, razing the tenants, burning their corn, and killing their persons. The clan held the rebuilt castle. Huntley could not get enough cannon and gunpowder, and he dropped the threat. The clan had no part in the rising of 1745. The chief then was Alexander Brodie of that Ilk, the nineteenth, Lord Lyon King of Arms, appointed Lord Lyon in 1727. His wife, Mary Sleigh, is credited with the formal landscape laid out between 1730 and 1750, including a Baroque garden that has gone. The original design used radiating avenues, and little has been laid over it since. Embellishments came about 1830 and about 1900. Roy's military map, dated about 1750 and also given as 1747 to 1755, shows the house surrounded by rectangular enclosures, with the main approach from the west. A survey of about 1770 by George Brown, now kept in the castle, shows a more elaborate landscape. The eighteenth century was the height of that formal garden. An Iron Age fort survives on the Downie, or Dounie, Hillock nearby. Tradition places a curse on the chiefs, that no son born inside the castle should become heir, and explains it by a story of an early chief who promised an old woman a new gown if she confessed to witchcraft and then had her burned. The blasted heath where Macbeth is said to have met the witches lies on Brodie land and is called locally Macbeth's Hillock. Woodland walks were made north-west toward Macbeth's Hill, where Macbeth is reputed to have seen the witches. The play Macbeth, first performed in 1606, sets Duncan's castle at Forres and the witches on moorland near the town.

Alexander, the nineteenth laird, died in 1754 with substantial debts. His son died five years later at the age of eighteen, and the estate passed to a cousin, James Brodie of Spynie, the twenty-first laird. Debts remained. By 1774 the estate was in financial trouble and was sold by judicial sale. One account says the bankruptcy of 1774 was staved off by Brodie's father-in-law. Another says the estate was sold to the Earl of Fife, James's brother-in-law, who returned the policies to the family and kept the bulk of the lands. James, the twenty-first chief, was married to Lady Margaret Duff, daughter of William Duff, first Earl of Fife, so the earl stands in the record both as father-in-law and as brother-in-law. The earl purchased the estate and returned half of it. The heir, James, went to India, made a fortune, and used part of it to build a Brodie House in Madras. He died prematurely in 1802, or in a boating accident on the Adyar in 1801 or 1802. A separate account says that James, younger of Brodie, built a mansion on the Adyar, named it Brodie Castle, and that the house still stands as a college of Carnatic music, while a younger brother, Alexander, returned from Madras a rich man and bought Thunderton House in Elgin, Arnhall in Kincardineshire, and The Burn. William succeeded as twenty-second laird in 1824, by which time much of the detail of the formal garden had probably been lost. Burns stayed a night at the castle in 1787. In 1788 Deacon William Brodie, of the Milton branch of the clan rather than the castle line, was executed.

Alexander of Madras married a daughter of James Wemyss of Wemyss by Lady Elizabeth Sutherland, and their only child was Elizabeth. Elizabeth Gordon, Duchess of Gordon, was born Elizabeth Brodie in London on 20 June 1794 and died at Huntly Lodge on 31 January 1864. Her father, a younger son of James Brodie, made his fortune in India and sat in parliament for Nairnshire from 1785 to 1790 and for the Elgin Burghs. Her mother, Elizabeth Margaret, daughter of James Wemyss, died when the girl was six, and maiden aunts in Elgin brought her up. On 11 December 1813 she married George Gordon, Marquess of Huntly, twenty-five years her senior. Her father gave a dowry of one hundred thousand pounds. She became Duchess of Gordon in 1827, when she was thirty-three, and Mistress of the Robes in 1830. Her husband died in 1836. They had no children, the ducal line ended, and she was the last Duchess of Gordon. She was nicknamed the Good Duchess. She left the Episcopal church and joined the Free Church of Scotland in 1846, and she is remembered as a founder of the Gordon Schools in Huntly and of the Gordon Chapel in Fochabers. On her death in 1864 the Brodies of Brodie became beneficiaries of the Gordon estate and inherited much of its moveable property.

William, the twenty-second laird, commissioned William Burn in 1824 to turn the tower into a mansion in the Scots Baronial style. The additions were only partly completed. They brought fresh debts, and some of the contents had to be sold. The family fortunes improved in 1837, when William married Elizabeth Bailley of Redcastle. Burn's work was then remodelled by James Wylson about 1840, or about 1845, and the completion of the additions is also placed between about 1840 and 1852, with further alterations in 1846. William Burn, born in Rose Street, Edinburgh, on 20 December 1789, was the fourth of sixteen children of the architect Robert Burn and Janet Patterson. He trained from 1808 with Sir Robert Smirke in London, returned to Edinburgh in 1812, and from 1816 made his name with country houses after he lost the competition to finish Robert Adam's Old College to William Henry Playfair. He was a pioneer of the Scottish Baronial Revival, the nineteenth-century Gothic revival that brought back the roofs, conical turrets, crowstepped gables, and asymmetric plans of late medieval and early modern Scottish houses. Among its architects were Burn and his pupil David Bryce, who joined him as a pupil in 1825 and as a partner in 1841. The revival followed the Picturesque fashion, with Abbotsford, rebuilt for Walter Scott from 1816, as an early model. Burn was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1827, served as Grand Architect of the Grand Lodge of Scotland from 1827 to 1844, moved his practice to London, and died at 6 Stratton Street, Piccadilly, on 15 February 1870. His biography credits him with as many as six hundred country houses. The Brodie commission belongs to 1824, early in that career, and the house shows the revival's marks on an older Z-plan: the conical stair roof, the crenellated corbelled wallhead, the crowstepped gables, and the asymmetric extension.

Wylson's entrance hall, of about 1845, adapts an earlier vaulted undercroft. It has short columns with foliated capitals and reset inscribed stone plaques. The library, also of about 1845, is lined with wooden bookcases under a continuous egg-and-dart frieze. The house now holds more than six thousand volumes, with furniture, ceramics, and pictures that include seventeenth-century Dutch masters and modern watercolours, and with Oriental artefacts. A drawing room by Burn, of 1824, has painted decoration on the architraves, overdoors, and ceiling, probably of the 1860s, restored in 1982. The whole building was restored in 1978 to 1980, and in 1980 it was renovated and re-harled by Rubert Hurt and Partners. The main block reads now as roughly L-plan, of about three storeys, wrapped around the original Z-plan tower. The castle is described as rose-coloured. A nineteenth-century burial ground of the family lies to the south-west.

On the 1770 plan the park lay mainly south-west of the house, with the Cow Park to the north beyond the walled garden. A Grand Avenue, replanted about 1850 with alternate copper and green beech in the shape of a wine glass, ran on the south-west axis and enclosed an area called the Green. Dovecot Park lay to the north of that, and Charles Park and the Turnip Park to the south. By about 1870 a winding drive, now a footpath, linked the castle to the West Lodge. Another broad double avenue separated the park from woodland to the south-east, which had been a fruit orchard in the 1770s. Clumps planted about 1830, of Scots pine, beech, lime, sweet chestnut, and horse chestnut, were thinned by the gales of 1953. Alan Mitchell measured specimen trees on the south lawn in 1984. Most of the enclosing woods have been replanted since the 1950s with Norway spruce and Sitka spruce, with broadleaves on the outer edges. Some eighteenth-century beech remains beside an adventure play area. The avenue that once ran south-west beyond the pond through Hardmuir Wood has gone. The railway cut Raffpark wood, south of the pond, in 1856, and by 1870 the radiating paths there seem to have been lost. Monkey puzzle and other ornamental conifers remain in the Cow Park. The thermometer-shaped pond was part of the 1730s layout and closed the view down the south-west avenue. By 1870 it had been joined to four other ponds, and the edges have silted, though the old formal outline can still be seen. There has been an intention to clear it without restoring the original shape. It is given some value for nature, and there is a nature trail.

An informal shrubbery replaced a formal garden made by William Brodie in the mid-nineteenth century. Most of the planting that followed was the work of Ian Brodie in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth. It became overgrown after the war and was later cleared, with new trees begun. Some yews set in circles remain, and the bases of Victorian gravel paths remain, though neither those paths nor the original layout have been the basis of restoration. A tennis court was built in 1958 on the lawn between the shrubbery and Cathedral Walk. The walled garden lies north-east of the castle, as on the 1770 plan. Its outer walls may date from about 1730. By 1870 a yew hedge split a kitchen garden, farther from the house, from a formal garden nearer the castle. The cross paths have gone since the war. The ground is used mainly as game cover, with a small area kept for cut flowers, and only the frame of one glasshouse remains. Two sundials in the walled garden, one Victorian and one earlier, have both been moved. The head gardener's house and the garden bothy have been renovated for holiday letting. The stables, west of the castle, are eighteenth-century and were recorded as derelict, with an intention to restore them. Station Lodge, East Lodge, and West Lodge passed into private ownership. Station Lodge stands about five hundred metres south of the castle, and West Lodge about four hundred and fifty metres west. Cathedral Avenue, along the northern edge, was largely lost in the gales of 1953 and has been replanted with lime and horse chestnut.

Ian Ashley, the twenty-fourth laird, was born in 1868 and succeeded in 1889. He was a keen gardener and established a notable daffodil collection in the policies. The collection is called a national daffodil collection, and the grounds are said to carry more than one hundred varieties in spring. The same designed-landscape record that calls the collection famous also rates the horticultural interest as little, because of ornamental conifers and shrubs of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and it says that bringing the daffodil collection back would raise that interest. His son Ninian, the twenty-fifth laird, entered an agreement with the National Trust for Scotland in 1978 and kept part of the castle for his own use. The listing says that Ninian, twenty-fifth Brodie, handed the castle to the National Trust for Scotland in 1980 after a purchase through the Land Fund by the SDD, and that the family had held it continuously until then. The clan account says that Montague Ninian Alexander Brodie of Brodie, the twenty-fifth chief, sometime a stage actor, died in 2003 having bequeathed the castle in 1978. He is also called the last of the family to live in the castle. Because his descendants were unhappy with the transfer, no Brodie now lives there, and the family wing has been prepared for holiday letting. Holiday cottages stand on the estate as well.

A rare pontifical document was found in the castle in 1972. It is now in the British Museum. It is thought to date from about the year 1000 and to show associations with Durham. Ninian's son, Alastair Ian Ninian, the twenty-sixth chief, also died in 2003, aged sixty-one. He had lived in Cambridgeshire and worked in computing, and he had stepped back from the family after his divorce in 1986 from Mary-Louise Johnson. She, displeased by the transfer of the castle, sued her father-in-law, and the children also went to court over education and living costs. Alexander Brodie tried to have the transfer overturned and did not succeed. The twenty-sixth chief left most of an estate of three hundred thousand pounds to his second wife. His successor, Alexander Tristan Duff Brodie of Brodie, the twenty-seventh chief, received five thousand pounds. He is a member of the Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs. The chief's motto is Unite. The crest is a right hand holding a bunch of arrows. The plant badge is periwinkle.

Archaeological work on the fabric and the grounds is recorded from the 1990s, including the masonry reading of 1998. The finds list attached to the building includes a wine bottle and cutlery of the nineteenth century. A dig in 2019 found a ditch that was hoped to be part of a medieval enclosure, and that dig was later described as the only previous exploratory excavation before the work of 2022. From 20 to 25 September 2022 a further excavation, called both a six-day dig and a dig in which volunteers helped over three days, looked for the medieval landscape. One hundred and eighty-six volunteers, including scouts and older adults, took part. The team, led by Daniel Rhodes, believed they had found the remains of a demolished building that had not been recorded before and that seemed to predate the eighteenth-century estate plan. They also found a piece of pottery that may be medieval, glass bottles from the 1700s, cobble tracks, and flooring. The first castle was described, for that dig, as standing inside an enclosure and among smaller buildings where the daily work of the estate went on. The south-west tower is what remains of that early house above ground.

The castle and its policies, including the daffodil collection, are owned by the National Trust for Scotland and are open to the public through the year. The castle may be hired for weddings and for indoor or outdoor events. Guided tours present the changes in the building's shape and use. A playful garden near the house takes episodes from the family story as its theme and includes what is called Scotland's biggest bunny sculpture. The grounds are open daily, with toilets from 09:00 to 17:00, and the car park ticket is five pounds. The published hours list the castle itself as open for events only. An illuminated event runs on four evenings each week from 5 November until 29 November, and on those days the estate closes at 4.30pm except to ticket-holders, whose first admission is at 5pm.

Canonical page: https://getsitesee.com/places/brodie-castle