Fingask Castle (proprietors)

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Fingask Castle, Tayside, Perthshire, Scotland.

• There are mentions of the lands of Fingask in the Foundation Charter of the Abbey of Scone by Alexander I. The date of the charter is said to be 1114 or 1115, (Liber de Scon, page two).

• Bruce family, descended from the senior line of the Bruces of Clackmannan, which included Sir David Bruce who married Janet, daughter of Sir William Stirling, of Keir. Their son, Robert Bruce held charter of Rate (Rait) in 1484, confirmed 1488, and his son David resigned his right to Clackmannan to his uncle in February 1506/7. At the time when Patrick Bruce was laird, a stone was set into the house showing the date 1594.

• A tombstone near the ruined church of Rait reveals:

Here lies Jonet Gibsone, spouse to William Bruce

Laird of Fingask who bore him ... children

Whereof five males was left behind her, who

Lived together the space of 18 yeers

And of her age the space of 33 yeers

She died the last of Aprule Ano. Domi. 1647.

The last of the Bruce lairds of Fingask was Laurence Bruce: whose pecuniary involvments necessitated the sale of the estate for the behoof of his creditors in the year 1671 (Melville, p.119).

• Sir Patrick Threipland, 1st Bt (died a prisoner at Stirling Castle, after 18 February 1689, he was held for Stuart adherence),

son of Andrew, a burgess of Perth 1628. Merchant trafficker of Perth; Treasurer of Perth 1657; knighted 1674 for diligence in supprerssion of conventiclers; created a baronet of Nova Scotia 10 November 1687. MP for Perth (1661-63, 1665, 1667, 1669-74); Provost of Perth (1664-); Baillie of Perth (1659-62) and Dean of the Guild (1661) of Perth. He married (13 March 1665) Euphemia, daughter of John Conqueror of Friarton, Kirkton Hill, Perth. One daughter Euphemia was wife to Alexander Rose (d.1720), Bishop of Moray and Edinburgh.

Purchased Fingask in 1672. On 22 March 1672 a royal Charter was granted him containing a new erection of barony of Fingask in his favour, which was ratified by the Scottish parliament. In 1674 Threipland added the neighbouring Braes of the Carse tower house and estate of Kinnaird to his realm.

• Sir David Threipland, 2nd Bt (c.1670-d.1746),

having absorbed Tory principles from his father he was one of the first to join the standard of the Earl of Mar well in time for the dubious Battle of Sheriffmuir. Consequently, the baronetcy was attainted by act of parliament and Fingask and its estate was forfeited and bought by the York Buildings Company. He married firstly in 1688, Elizabeth (7 sons & 3 daughters), daughter of Sir James Ramsay, 2nd bt, of Bamff, and again in 1707, Kattrin (2 sons & 4 daughters), the lass of Gowrie, daughter and heir of David Smyth of Barnhill(s), Kinnoull, Perth, the son of Patrick Smyth of Braco (d.1651), the busiest man in Orkney.

• York Buildings Company, (owner: c1716-1783), (bought for £9,606 6s 4.5d)
• Dame Katherine (Kattrin) Threipland, the lass of Gowrie, (d. 18 March 1762), (leasee),
• Dr. (Sir) Stuart Threipland, (3rd Bt) (b. 26 May 1716-d.2 February 1805),

repurchased Fingask in 1783 at a sale of forfeited land for £12,207. His elder half-brother David (1694-1745) was killed at Preston Pans. He married firstly at St. Paul's, Edinburgh, in 1753, Jannet, daughter of David Sinclair of Southdun, Caithness, and secondly at St. Paul's Edinburgh, in 1761, Jannet daughter of Richard Murray of Pennyland, heiress of her cousin Grizel Budge (d. 1798) (via her uncle William Budge, d.1765) of Dale & Toftingall, Halkirk, Caithness. His sister Miss Euphame (Aunt Effie) Threipland (1713- ) is said to have run the estate in his absence. President of the Royal Medical Society, 4 december 1766.

• Sir Patrick (aka Peter) Budge Murray Threipland, 3rd/4th Bt (b. Nov.1762-d.11 January 1837),

born Kinloch's close, Edinburgh. Admitted Scot's advocate 31/7/1784. 1715 attainder repealed by Act of Parliament, and restored to dignity of a baronet, 26 May 1826. DL for Perthshire and Caithness. Married (27/3/1792) his first cousin once-removed (half-blood) Jessy (d. 19 January 1855) daughter of William Scott Kerr of Chatto or Thirlestane. Her grandmother was a daughter of Sir David Threipland, 2nd Bt., by his first wife. Between 1828 and 1831 added to the front west part of the house. Embellishment and building onto the south front continued til 1840.

• Sir (aka Peter) Patrick-Murray Threipland, 4th/5th and last Bt, JP, DL (Perth and Caithness) (b Edinburgh 26 May 1800-d. 30 April 1882),

Educated in Edinburgh and Paris. A sometime Major in the Perth militia, retired 1843. Commissioner for Supply for counties Perth and Caithness. Before and after his mother died in 1855 he lived at Fingask with his three elder sisters and, at time of the 31 March 1851 Census, a staff of seven, viz: Housekeeper (Jean Oswald); Ladies Maid (Mary Gray); Cook (Margaret Stewart); Sir Peter's House Maid (Mary McLagan); Butler (David Chalmers); Footman (John Bertram); and Coachman (Andrew David).

Mrs Drummond of Megginch Castle described them:

Sir Patrick Threipland lived there, and occasionally at Toftingall, Caithness, with his three sisters Miss Jessie [c1796-1871] the clever, agreable hostess; Miss Eliza [c1798- ], sarcastic and sharp tongued, the manager of the stables; and Miss Catherine [c1799- ], the gardener-much less clever, but with far more sweetness than either of her sisters.(Melville, page 122)

When Miss Jessie died in May 1871, Mrs Drummond reported that the: life of the old house went out.

Near 1882 he left Fingask to his first cousin's second son, Colonel William Scott Kerr, of Roxburgh, DSO, JP, DL (Roxburgh)(1866-1942).

• William-Scott Kerr, (second son of William of Sunlaws, Kelso and Chatto, Roxburgh), abandoned his patronymic and assumed the surname of Murray Threipland in lieu, on 30 April 1882. Having served in the Grenadier Guards, which he joined in 1887, seeing action in the Nile (1898), and South Africa (1899-1902), he became the founding colonel commanding of the Welsh Guards in February 1915, and was its Colonel from March 1937. He was a member of the Guards Club, and of Edinburgh's New Club. Educated in Edinburgh he was also resident at Dale House, Halkirk, Caithness and 11 Evelyn mansions, Carlisle place, SW1. He married in 1899 Charlotte Eleanor, co-heiress of William Wyndham Lewis, Esq, of The Heath, and New House, Glamorgan.
• Bought by Sir John Henderson Stewart, 1st Bt. (created 2 July 1920), FRGS, DL, JP (Dundee)(1877-6 February 1924), in 1917. Freeman of the City of London; Sole partner (his share amounted to £150,000) of Messrs. Alexander Stewart & sons (Dundee) distillers; sole partner of Fraser, Stewart and Co. (whiskey merchants); deputy chairman of Sheffield Steel Products. Son of Alexander Stewart of Dundee. Also resident at H5 and H6 Albany, Piccadilly, W1, and (c1923) 6 Douglas Terrace, Broughton Ferry. He married Ethel Bailey daughter of John Fraser of Monkbarns, Arbroath. His son Sir Bruce Stewart (2nd Bt) was born in 1904 and became a Flying Officer in the New Zealand Air Force.

A casualty of prohibition, he died owing a truly spectacular £570,000, which would be between £30 and £120 million pounds in 2007 money (see The Times, 3 March 1924, page 14. column c).

In 1917 the Fingask estate was made up of 2,587 acres (10 km²). This comprised arable 1,070 acres (4 km²), hill 1,400 acres (6 km²), and woods 116 acres (0.5 km²). The rental of the Fingask, and those of the much smaller estates of Kinnaird, and Inchmichael (which he had added), had given Sir John an annual rental return of £4,000.

• Bought by H. B. Gilroy of Ballumbie in 1925. House saved from ruin but wholly re-modelled, all spiral staircases removed and nineteenth century frontal additions demolished.
• Bought by Mark Stepney Murray Threipland, son of Patrick Murray Threipland and Marged Howard Stepney (a descendant of 2nd Lord De Tabley and Jerome de Salis, amongst many others), in 1969, by which time the area had been reduced to 75 acres. He, his wife, Molly and their son, Gavin, lived there for twenty-five years in which time they planted many hundreds of trees.
• Bought by Andrew Murray Threipland, son of Patrick Murray Threipland and Leslie McNair Scott in 1996.

Sir David Threipland (1666-1746), 2nd Bart., as a boy	William Hamilton of Bangour, fellow Rouen exile and friend of Dr. Stuart Threipland	Dr. (Sir) Stuart Threipland	Sir Stuart Threipland's medical case (as seen at the Royal Medical Society in Edinburgh), as used during and after Culloden (18 April 1746)
Dame Katherine (c1679-1762), daughter of David Smythe of Barnhill, and second wife to Sir David Threipland, 2nd Bt. (d.1746).	Jessy Scott Kerr married her cousin Sir Patrick Threipland in 1792. She bore him four children and died in 1855.	Eliza Threipland	Jessie Threipland
Miss Eliza Threipland: sarcastic and sharp tongued, the manager of the stables	Arms of Sir Patrick-Murray Threipland, 4th/5th Bt., as seen in Burke's Peerage, 1851	Threipland arms on the cover of Chambers' 1880 book	Miss Jessie Threipland: the clever, agreable hostess

[edit] External

Fingask Castle website

[edit] References

• Robert Chambers, The Threiplands of Fingask, Edinburgh, 1880.
• Rev. James M'Turk Strachan, BD, FRSA (Scot), From the Braes of the Carse, Charles Spence's Poems and Songs, 1898. _{(48 years minister at Kilspindie & died 1936)}.
• Lawrence Melville, The Fair Land of Gowrie, William Culross & Son, Coupar Angus, 1939 (reprinted 1975), (chapter 27).
• Country Life, July 18 1936.
• Christie's, Fingask Castle, Rait, by Perth, April 1993.
• David Chalmers, The Butler's Day Book 1849-1855, Everyday Life in a Scottish Castle, ed. Andrew Threipland, Perth, 1999.
• Country Life, October 10 2006.
• Burke's Peerage, 1851.
• Friends of Perth & Kinross Council archive, newsletter no. 20.
• The Threipland Papers held by Perth & Kinross. The collection comprises over 31,000 items.
• Burke's Landed Gentry, The Kingdom of Scotland, 19th edition, Delaware, USA, 2001.
• R. de Salis, The Threiplands and their Follies, Perth, 2007.
• Jack Prout, Black Bob The Dandy Wonder Dog, D.C. Thomson & Co. Ltd. & John Leng & Co. Ltd., London, Glasgow, Manchester, Dundee, 1950. (castle is illustrated on pages 71 & 75, within the story: Clever Bob, The Dog Detective).