The end of an era at Barra
April 2008
by Peter Myers
Unlike many of Aberdeenshire’s castles, Barra was a family home which had a lived-in feeling about it. Mhairi Bogdan, who was born an Irvine, spent her formative years in the picturesque Barra Castle. When her mother, Mrs Dorothy Irvine who lived at the castle, died in 1982, Mhairi returned to live there with her husband, retired consultant paediatrician Dr Andrew Bogdan, and their archaeologist son, Nicholas.
Dorothy had married Quentin Irvine, laird of Straloch and Barra, in 1915 and when her husband died in 1941 she looked after Straloch. In 1956 her son, Major Francis (Toby) Irvine, left the Army to take over the running of the Straloch and Barra estates.
Nicholas wrote a pamphlet about Barra which is the best concise history of the castle and the families who have lived there. He had an unrivalled knowledge of the North-East’s castellated architecture and had been working on a book on the subject when he died suddenly at the age of 55 in August 2002.
Barra Castle has a fairly complex architectural history, but its picturesque appearance has earned it many accolades. Scottish historical novelist and historian Nigel Tranter described it as “one of the most delightful and authentic lesser castles in the country”, while David MacGibbon and Thomas Ross, the 19th-century authors of The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland, wrote that the south-east view of the castle “shows the remarkable simplicity of the design, the turrets being carried up from the foundation, and corbelling being very sparingly employed. This is probably one of the most successful designs we have of this class of house”.
The buildings of Barra Castle are arranged around three sides of a courtyard with the fourth side being enclosed by a wall which is pierced by an entrance and adorned with three stone urns. The earliest specific reference to ‘the fortalice of Barra’ is in 1615 when it was designated the chief seat of the barony, although it is generally agreed that substantial parts of the present castle date from an earlier period.
By the late 15th century the Barra estate was held by two portioners, the Blackhalls and the Kings, and it seems that the earliest part of the existing castle was the work of the earliest recorded of the Barra-Blackhalls, who was known as ‘the Goodman’. This earliest phase included a small tower or keep which has survived incorporated in the existing fabric.
The Blackhalls of Barra prospered during much of the 16th century, but in 1592 both halves of the estate, theirs and the Kings’, were forfeited to the Crown, probably because of some failure to perform feudal duties. Before this the Blackhalls had extended their castle by building what may have been an L-plan tower-house, although comparatively little of it remains.
In 1599, George Seton, a kinsman and associate of Alexander Seton, Earl of Dunfermline and Chancellor of Scotland, was granted both halves of Barra. George Seton was guardian to his younger brother, the Laird of Meldrum, and also Vicar of Meldrum and had succeeded his uncle as Chancellor of the Diocese of Aberdeen. Despite his clerical status, he took a prominent part in his family’s feuds and needed a secure home. He was responsible for the reconstruction of the castle which included erecting corner towers at either end of the south façade, while in the centre, a stairtower, a corbelled caphouse was inserted.
Not long after George Seton’s death in c.1630, Barra passed to his nephew’s family, the Setons of Pitmedden, but by 1658 James Seton of Pitmedden was in financial difficulties, largely because of his family’s loyalty to the Stuarts, and he was forced to sell Barra to James Reid, a member of a long-established Aberdeen legal family. James was succeeded by his son, John, who was made a baronet in 1705. Sir John and his wife, Mary, were responsible for the panelling of the main bedroom (now the Ramsay Room) and the Hall (now the Drawing Room). They are also believed to have laid out the formal garden to the south of the castle, although little of it remains apart from a terrace and one of the summer houses.
Sir John was succeeded by his son, Alexander, who became the second baronet. Sir Alexander, who became an MP in 1710, was a loyal supporter of the House of Hanover, but one of his younger sons was lured into joining the Jacobite force which put a government army to flight at the battle of Inverurie on 23 December 1745. Fortunately, this youthful escapade appears to have been overlooked, probably as a result of his father’s political connections.
Sir Alexander died in 1750 and was succeeded by his third son, James, who had earlier served in the army. Sir James was laird for only a short time before he sold Barra to John Ramsay of Laithers and Melrose in 1754. John Ramsay added a north wing to the castle and also added two pavilions to the outer courtyard, but his building work at Barra ended in 1766 when he bought the Straloch estate, near Newmachar, and decided to build a Georgian mansion there. Although the Ramsay lairds retained the use of certain rooms, the castle was used as a farmhouse from 1766 until 1909.
It was John Ramsay’s great grand-daughter, Mary, who had married Francis Irvine of Drum in 1882, who began restoring the older part of the castle in 1909. She had looked after Straloch until her second son, Quentin Irvine, came of age in 1909.
The restoration work at Barra involved mainly undoing the alterations of the previous 150 years and included unblocking windows, repanelling the hall and subdividing the upper hall. Further improvements took place in 1956 when the Georgian North Wing was reroofed and in more recent years the North Pavilion was restored.
Barra Castle’s interior was as charming as its external appearance as I discovered during several visits while researching articles about Mhairi’s uncle, Admiral Sir Robert Burnett, who belonged to the Burnetts of Kemnay. Mhairi was left some of Sir Robert’s personal papers and possessions when he died in 1959 as he and his wife had no family. Sir Robert had flown his flag in the cruiser HMS Belfast during the Battle of North Cape on 26 December 1943 which saw the destruction of the German battle-cruiser Scharnhorst, which had posed a great threat to the Allied convoys taking war supplies to Soviet Russia. Sir Robert’s sister, Mrs Dorothy Irvine, told the news of the naval action to the old gamekeeper at Barra, who used to take the admiral shooting when he came home on leave. He was of course delighted, but he was an Aberdeenshire man. So all he said was: “Aye, he might hit a thing that big.”
Another visitor to Barra in the late 1930s was the Bishop of Aberdeen and Orkney, who was intrigued during one visit by the sight of a monkey larking about in a tree. He told his hosts that he was struck by the monkey’s resemblance to Sandy Macpherson, one of his clergymen, and thereafter the animal was known by that name.
The monkey had arrived at Barra in the strangest of circumstances. One day Mhairi was asked to go to Aberdeen Joint Station where she was to collect a mystery package. She was astonished to find it contained a live monkey with nothing to indicate who had sent it. Although some predicted that the monkey wouldn’t survive the North-East climate, it grew a thick coat and became something of a local celebrity.
Mhairi’s family had strong ties with Russia: the father of her husband, Andrew, was the Tsarist Navy’s attaché in London during World War I and after the Bolsheviks seized control in 1917, he arranged for the evacuation of his family, including the three-year-old Andrew, from Archangel to Leith.
Mhairi’s Aunt Lettie was employed by the chief of police in St Petersburg as a governess to his family and she often visited the Imperial Court in the Russian capital.
A souvenir of her sojourn in Russia displayed at Barra was a royal blue and white china teacup and saucer bearing the double-headed eagle crest of the Romanovs and which had come from the royal nursery.
The end of the Ramsay and Irvine era at Barra Castle was marked last August by a private reception at the castle, hosted by Robert Bogdan, Mhairi and Andrew’s younger son. After refreshments were served in the kitchen, the guests were allowed to wander about the castle and reflect that unlike many of Aberdeenshire’s castles, this was a family home which had a lived-in feeling about it.
Just as one era ended so another began at Barra and the castle, the estate and its farms were acquired by prominent North-East farmer Gordon Stephen, whose son, David, is married to TV presenter Sarah Mack.
Peter Myers, who has lived in Aberdeenshire since 1963, works as a journalist in Aberdeen. He enjoys writing about subjects with a historical theme, which include local history, transport and shipping. He is also a passionate Indophile.
This is an article from the April 2008 edition of Leopard Magazine. To read much more like this every month, see our subscription details.