Old Photograph Flowerdale House Scotland

Old photograph of Flowerdale house, below Creag a Chait, the Cat's Rock in Gairloch, Scotland. Flowerdale House is situated in a beautiful glen of the same name, just inland from Gairloch's harbour at Charlestown. It is the family seat of the Mackenzies of Gairloch. The original house at Gairloch was called Tigh Dige or Moat House. It was in a hollow below the mansion seen here and had a moat and drawbridge. The present house was built in 1738 for Sir Alexander Mackenzie and his wife, Janet. Their initials and the date are carved on the skewputts. It was the first house in the district to have a slated roof and was then named Tigh Digh nam gorm Leac, Moat House of the blue slates. In 1904 an extension by Andrew Maitland and Son included the stepped gable and the large bow addition at the front. Conflict continued between Clan Macleod and Mackenzies. There is a story that, on seeing a Macleod boat coming in to the bay, a Mackenzie archer shot the look-out, who was up the mast, from the roof of the house, a distance of half a mile. In 1745 the captain of a man-of-war, searching for Prince Charlie, invited the laird on board. The laird declined as he has was dining with guests on top of the high rock, Creag a Chait, behind Tigh Dige but asked the captain to join them. The reply was a broadside to the house, the canon ball lodging in the gable end. Fraser of Foyers, fleeing after Culloden, was hidden for some time in a secret recess in the house. In September 1921 the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, was staying at Flowerdale House when he heard that Ireland had rejected the King and Empire. He called the cabinet at Inverness, the one and only time it met outside London, England. Osgood Mackenzie, born 1842, died 1922, Hector's descendant, writing in 1922, states that tourists seeing the profusion of wild flowers in the lovely Glen suggested it should be named Flowerdale but that during his life the house was only ever called Tigh Dige and the place Am Baile Mor.



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