Historical Notes

Forter Castle

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This is a story of a bloody feud . . . and some prodigious walking,

Forter Castle is a 16th century keep originally owned by the Ogilvies, one of the oldest families in Angus.  The chief of the family was created Earl of Airlie in 1639 by Charles I, and a year later he was away fighting for Charles in England when the Campbells of Argyll took their chance to further a long-running feud between the clans.  The story goes that the Campbell raiding party took just two days to cross from Inverary!

The earl's wife was heavily pregnant at the time and living at Forter Castle, but she got enough warning from her eldest son to escape . . . and walked over to Dundee with the younger children, where she gave birth to a baby girl.  The Campbells passed a leisurely two weeks burning and looting the Ogilvy estates.  So much so that it was said at the time the Earl of Airlie was 'left not in all his lands a cock to craw day.'

On their way out of the glen they burned Forter Castle and it remained a blackened shell until it was restored in the mid 1990s.