Tolquhon Castle

By B. R. Forbes, Clan Historian & Storyteller

Grounded in defensive austerity, Tolquhon Castle was transformed into an elegant Renaissance showplace. However, later generations chased wealth through risky ventures. They ultimately lost this house of cultured confidence through creditors, lawsuits, and mounting debt. Now a shell of its former glory, the castle remains a lesson in the dangers of hubris.

Tolquhon (pronounced toh-HON) stands on a wooded ridge overlooking a broad plain that stretches north from the River Don to the River Ythan. This was the ancient Thanage of Fermartyn (or Formartine), administered by the crown since the thirteenth century. A thanage is an old Scottish administrative unit in which Crown lands were managed on the king's behalf by an official called a thane, rather than held outright as a feudal barony. In 1390, King Robert III granted the thanage to Sir Henry Preston as payment for ransoming an English knight, Ralph de Percy, captured at the Battle of Otterburn in 1388.

In 1420, Sir Henry’s second daughter Marjorie (or Mariota) married Sir John Forbes, brother of Sir Alexander Forbes, later 1st Lord Forbes. A marriage contract dated July 7, 1420, stated that “Mariota de Preston, daughter and one of the heirs of the late Henry de Preston, knight, lord of Fernietyne” have given “to the noble man John de Forbes, the half of all the lands of the lordship of Fernietyne, with its pertinents, lying in the district of Buchan within the sheriffdom of Aberdeen.” This was Tolquhon, which included Preston’s Tower, which served as its “chief messuage” or official administrative seat of the eastern portion of the Thanage.

For the next century and a half, the Forbeses of Tolquhon established themselves sufficiently to be counted among the landed gentry of Aberdeenshire. Alexander, 6th Laird of Tolquhon, fell at the disastrous Battle of Pinkie in September 1547. His death in battle passed the castle and estates to his son William, a young man who would prove to be the most consequential Forbes to hold Tolquhon.

Like his father before him, Sir William lived on inherited land-based wealth: stable, agricultural, and rooted in feudal tenure. He was a highly effective estate manager who achieved political stability and royal favor under James VI.

This combination allowed him to finance the Renaissance transformation of Tolquhon Castle, leaving an impressive architectural legacy. Sir William made extensive renovations between 1584 and 1589. He turned the modest fifteenth century fortress into one of the most striking private houses in the north-east of Scotland.

Sir William kept the old Preston's Tower standing at one corner rather than tearing it down, and built an entirely new courtyard castle around it, with ranges of buildings enclosing a central open yard on every side.

The public face of the new castle was an elaborate gatehouse fitted with gun loops. This was the visitor's first encounter with the castle and was designed more to impress than to defend. Above the entrance are the Forbes arms and the Royal Arms of James VI, commemorating the king's visit in 1589, shortly after the work was completed. Beside the gateway, an inscribed panel records:

AL THIS WARKE EXCEP THE AULD TOUR WAS BEGVN BE WILLIAM FORBES 15 APRILE 1584 AND ENDIT BE HIM 20 OCTOBER 1589.

On the underside of one corner stone are the initials “T.L.”—the discreet signature of Thomas Leiper, the master mason. Beyond the gatehouse lay a long outer courtyard leading to the castle itself, a square complex built around an inner court. The principal residence occupied the south range and rose three stories.

A projecting drum tower overlooked the courtyard and was crowned by a small cap-house or watch room. Portions of its original harling—a weatherproof lime coating—still survive. Preston's earlier tower remained at the north-east corner. Its plain walls, six to eight feet thick, stood in marked contrast to William Forbes's more decorative Renaissance additions.

From the courtyard, a stair led to the great hall, whose floor was paved with hexagonal flagstones. A long gallery ran the length of the first floor of the west range, a fashionable feature meant for indoor walking and display rather than any military purpose. William even built himself a secret chamber, hidden beneath the floor of his own bed chamber, where tradition holds he kept his valuables. The basement of the southeast tower served as a prison. Beyond the courtyard walls, Forbes laid out a formal garden.

In 1589, Sir William commissioned a magnificent tomb monument in the south aisle of Tarves parish church. This included lifelike stone effigies of himself and his wife, Elizabeth Gordon. He enjoyed his completed castle for about six years until he died in 1596 and was interred in his Tarves tomb.

The estate continued in Forbes hands through the turbulent decades of the seventeenth century, until Alexander Forbes, 10th Laird of Tolquhon. He invested in the ill-fated Darien Scheme to establish a Scottish colony in Panama. This and other disastrous financial ventures forced Alexander to mortgage Tolquhon Castle. He had no legitimate issue at the time of his death, and so his brother Thomas, Burgess of Selkirk, inherited the castle in 1701.

Thomas, 11th Laird of Tolquhon, held the title for only a few weeks and died later in the same year. Thomas’s son, William, became 12th Laird Tolquhon. Court of Session records indicate that from 1713 to 1717 Thomas Hay, Sheriff Clerk of Aberdeen, brought legal action against William Forbes, along with several other creditors, seeking repayment of the family's mounting debts. He defaulted, and they tried to evict him, using the court order. He defied them and refused to go. The creditors then sold their rights to George Gordon, 1st Earl of Aberdeen (1637–1720), styled Viscount Formartine and Lord Haddo when he was raised to the peerage in 1682.

Finally, on September 5, 1718, Aberdeen ordered a company of government soldiers to capture Tolquhon for him. The former laird of Tolquhon was wounded in the melee and taken prisoner. When finally released, Forbes retired abroad and died in London in 1728.

William Gordon (1679—1746), 2nd Earl of Aberdeen and owner of Haddo House, eventually inherited the castle. He converted part of the complex into a working farmhouse, a fate common for many dispossessed Scottish castles at the time. Damp and neglect had already caused the loss of the castle’s painted ceilings and decorated beams, contributing to its considerable decay by the 1840s. The castle lingered as a farmhouse until about the end of the nineteenth century. The buildings fell further into ruin. In 1929, Tolquhon Castle was placed in the care of the Crown while it formed part of the Haddo estate of John Campbell Hamilton-Gordon, 1st Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair. The castle is now managed by Historic Environment Scotland and is open to the public during summer.

Tolquhon Castle remains the most expressive creation of the Forbes imagination—the exuberant but ill‑fated prodigal whose beauty once dazzled and whose downfall now instructs. Its Renaissance grace still speaks of a family determined to craft a home worthy of their rising stature, even as the weight of misjudged ventures slowly unraveled their fortunes.

Today, the castle’s open courtyards and carved stonework preserve both the brilliance and the warning embedded in its story: a reminder that ambition can inspire masterpieces, yet, when untethered from prudence, can leave even the grandest dreams standing hollow against the sky.

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Excerpted from Forbes: A Story of Stone by B. R. Forbes, copyright 2026.