What is recorded here

Thornton Castle is a small square tower house dated 1531, standing in Aberdeenshire with a crow-stepped cap-house and a round tower whose base may survive from the 14th Century. The Thornton family held the lands in the 13th Century before an heiress carried them to the Strachans in 1309, and the property passed through several hands until Sir Thomas Thornton bought it back in 1893. Its vaulted basement and wide turnpike stair suggest a place built for loud living, while faint tempera painting behind modern panelling hints that walls once glowed before someone decided to cover them up.

Scotland's National Record of the Historic Environment records Thornton Castle as Country House (mid 17th Century), Tower House (medieval). 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.

Thornton Castle in Scotland was originally a medieval tower house, later replaced by a mid-17th-century country house. It is important as an example of the transition from defensive medieval architecture to the more domestic styles of the early modern period.

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