A must-see: the "pink" of Craigievar — for the castle is pink — lifts above six plain storeys a finely carved crown of stone: pepper-pot turrets, gargoyles, finials and a high corbel course from which decorative stone cannon jut, running right around the building. The contrast is the subject itself: a massive, near-austere base and then, without transition, a burst of ornament at the top. William Forbes completed the whole around 1626, in the taste of the Aberdeenshire master-mason school. Inside, the Great Hall keeps its modelled plaster ceiling (1626) and its carved overmantel bearing the Royal Arms — the interior counterpart of the exterior decoration.
Did you know?
Craigievar's extraordinary plaster ceilings were the work of Italian-trained English craftsmen who set out from Bromley-by-Bow near London and worked their way north from house to house: Craigievar is the farthest north they reached.
Info
- Exterior decoration (stone) plus carved plaster ceilings indoors.
- The castle survives whole, unruined (National Trust for Scotland).
- The sculpture / decorative dimension of Craigievar Castle (see the linked monument entry).