What is recorded here

Cortachy Castle has guarded the mouth of Glen Clova since the early fourteenth century, its three surviving round towers still catching the light on the South Esk. Joanna de Moravia held the barony in her own right before her 1362 marriage carried it into the Douglas inheritance, and the Ogilvys have answered for it since James III granted it to Sir Walter in 1473. Cromwell burned it in 1651, Campbell damaged it in 1641, and a drummer still walks its rooms in local tradition, his beat said to warn of an Ogilvy death. The castle has absorbed every blow and kept its shape, which is more than most places manage.

Scotland's National Record of the Historic Environment records Cortachy Castle as Country House (16th Century). The official map says its point is accurate as follows: NGR given to the nearest 1m. The record does not by itself mean that the public may enter the place.

Cortachy Castle was built in the 16th century by the Keith family, a prominent Scottish noble family. It is remembered as a significant example of late medieval Scottish architecture and as the ancestral seat of the Earls of Kintore.

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