Tour Scotland Travel Video Winter Drive To Blair Atholl Highland Perthshire

Tour Scotland travel video Blog of a road drive North on the A9 road to the gates of Blair Castle in Blair Atholl on ancestry visit to Highland Perthshire, Scotland. Blair Castle is now closed for the Winter. Atholl or Athole, Scottish Gaelic: Athall; Old Gaelic Athfhotla, is a large historical division in the Scottish Highlands, bordering; Marr, Badenoch, Lochaber, Breadalbane, Strathearn, Perth, and Gowrie. Today it forms the northern part of Perth and Kinross. Atholl was historically a mormaerdom or earldom. The first recorded Earl of Atholl was Matad, Earl of Atholl sometime in the 12th century. In 1703 the title was made a Dukedom by Queen Anne. The right of the Earls of Atholl to hold courts for the area were ended in 1746 by the Heritable Jurisdictions Act. Until the early 19th century the only building on the site of the present village of Blair Atholl was an old Mill. It began to grow around the present parish church, largely as a planned settlement, when this was moved from Old Blair. The building of the main A9 North Road and railway line to Inverness encouraged the growth of the village, though the A9 has bypassed it since the 1980s.

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