Fingask Follies

Fingask Castle is a country house in Perth and Kinross, Scotland. It is perched 200 feet (61 m) above Rait, three miles (5 km) north-east of Errol, in the Braes of the Carse, on the fringes of the Sidlaw Hills. Thus it overlooks both the Carse of Gowrie and the Firth of Tay and beyond into the Kingdom of Fife. The name derives from Gaelic fionn-gasg: a white or light-coloured appendage.

Fingask was once an explicitly holy place, a convenient and numinous stop-off between the abbeys at Falkirk and Scone. It was later held by the Bruce family, and then by the Threiplands. In the eighteenth century it was owned by Jacobites and was forfeited (stolen by the Government). Since 1969 the castle has been a Threipland property again. Today, though still riddled with shrines, it is best known for its garden and parties. Fingask, referred to as "a jewel in the bosom of a glen" by an anonymous writer, is also home to the Fingask Follies, an annual musical event that takes place in late May and early June. The castle is a Category B listed building, and the estate is included on the Inventory of Historic Gardens and Designed Landscapes, the national register of significant gardens.

John Preston Neale, 1824.

Copper-plate engraving, John Greig after a drawing by Henry Gastineau, c. 1830.

Fingask, from the south, drawn and engraved by Alexander Carse, c. 1831.

Post card of Fingask Castle, N.B., sent from Errol to Oxford, franked 15 August 1910.

Castle from the south south east showing lost 19th-century embellishments.

Showing pre-1920s and post-1830 state of castle and garden, from south-west.

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