“Within sight of Stirling Castle”
Written as part of Amy Johnson Crow’s “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks” challenge. This week’s topic: My Favorite Photo.
One day, in September 2009, I was on a solo trip in Scotland, searching for places associated with my father’s ancestry. One day, taking my courage into my hands, I drove up a long driveway, uninvited, to see “Gartur,” a dwelling I had been researching online for several years.
The name was on the birth certificate of each child of my Scottish Great Great Grandfather, John MacNie, and his wife Jean. John and Jean lived at Gartur between (perhaps earlier than) 1812, when their first child was born, and 1837. They had seven children: Duncan born in 1812, John 1817, James 1818, Robert 1819, William 1822, Alexander 1824, and Jean, the only girl, in 1828. The baptisms of all seven are recorded in the register of St Ninians Old Parish, which surrounds the city of Stirling. The Parish records consistently added that John and Jean were residents of “Gartur.”
I had done plenty of online research before I ventured up the driveway. Referred to in some documents as ‘the laird’s house’, Gartur is a farmhouse within sight of Stirling Castle on the estate of Lord Murray of Polmaise. The Murray family had lived at Polmaise Castle since 1314, the year of the Battle of Bannockburn, where Robert the Bruce defeated the English king, Edward II. A low ridge of hills, where Bruce’s soldiers hid before taking the English by surprise, separates Polmaise, and Gartur, from the site of the battle.
Site of the Battle of Bannockburn. Gartur lies just over the line of hills.
Gartur was occupied at the time of John’s residence by members of the Graham family, related to the Dukes of Montrose. From online research I had learned that Gartur remained a building of historical interest. Historic Scotland described it as a Category B listed building – “a building of regional or more than local importance or major example of some particular period, style of building type”, with a farmhouse and steading listed as Category C(S) – local examples of the same.
Contemporary maps show that the buildings on the estate were the same as today: that is, a manor house with nearby stables and workers’ cottages for 2 or 3 families, in addition to the Lodge at the beginning of the long driveway. Since the parish records for the children’s baptisms all specify that the family lived at Gartur, then it seems probable that the MacNies lived in the stable/cottages complex.
Gartur. The building on the left are the stables and farm cottages. Over the hill lies Bannockburn.
With all this in my head I was quite anxious as I drove up the driveway. I had attempted to make contact with the current owner, Duncan Ogilvy, a property developer in Stirling, and left a message on an answering machine, but had not heard back. But I was in luck. My first sight of the house up close increased my nervousness by several degrees. It’s grandeur exceeded my expectations.
Gartur as seen emerging from the driveway
As I rounded the last curve in the rhododendron-lined drive to the house, I saw a man leading a child on a pony. He looked at me curiously as I got out of my car, but the moment I started to explain about my great great grandfather, he introduced himself as the current owner, Duncan Ogilvy, welcomed me and said that he had received my message. He then proceeded to show me around.
Gartur had long been abandoned by the Murrays and the Grahams and all the other wealthy families who had owned or occupied it in the one hundred and seventy years since my great great grandfather lived there. It was now suffering from neglect and was in danger of collapse. It was Duncan’s plan to save the buildings by restoring and renovating them and then selling them as a cluster of apartments. But he was having difficulty receiving planning permission and, I gathered, was running out of money for the scheme.
The building is in two distinct parts – the original 18th Century Scottish Laird’s House to the rear and a grand, 19th Century classical Georgian addition at the front.. The north face was in very bad shape.
The decaying Georgian facade.
This is what it once looked like.
The south side of the building, almost completely hidden by trees growing through the roof, was an older gabled farmhouse that was the eighteenth-century Laird’s house. The façade had been added when the Scottish gentry joined – and needed to impress – their Sassenach peers in London in the early eighteenth-century.
You can see the Georgian addition extending beyond the sides of the Laird’s House in this photo from 1975.
A close-up view of the stable block showed the same deterioration as the rest of the buildings. But all I could think of was that John MacNie and his family had lived here, that the children had grown up here, and had played underneath this archway.
The stable block, leading to the farmyard and cottages
More of my great grandfather’s life at Gartur can be found on his page in the family tree (http://ancestry.sheilaspear.com/ps01/ps01_134.html As I drove down the driveway to return to Stirling I saw the view from the Gatehouse. And this is my favorite photo: Stirling Castle as seen from Gartur, a view my great grandfather Robert, and his siblings, would have seen throughout their childhood.
Stirling Castle as seen from Gartur