Crimonmogate House, Buchan
Saturday 29th September 2001
The Crimonmogate estate, one of the finest in Scotland, once formed part of the vast northern lands of the Earls of Errol, the hereditary High Constables of Scotland. The origins of the estate have been traced back to the 14th century. Crimonmogate, a conflation of Gaelic and Old Norse terms meaning ‘The road through the cow-pasture by the peat-moss’, derives its name from the ancient and now disused tree-lined road which once passed a quarter of a mile south of the principal front of Crimonmogate House and which now forms the southern march of the Estate, a roughly triangular area of some 20 acres in the parish of Lonmay, by Fraserburgh on the north-east neuk of Buchan.
At the heart of the estate stands a magnificent and now superbly-restored neo-Classical palazzetto – one of the finest of its style and period anywhere in Europe, and listed Category A as being of supreme historical and architectural interest. Crimonmogate is Britain’s most easterly stately home.
This elegantly simple, proto-Doric templum in rure was designed by the celebrated neo-Classicist Archibald Simpson, who was the architect of many of the finest public buildings and country houses in Scotland during the Regency period, notably the Music Hall in Union Street, Aberdeen; the Dollar Academy and Stracathro House on the Angus border.
Crimonmogate is generally regarded as Simpson’s finest country house. Its architecture is a uniquely successful blend of the unostentatious masculinity of the Scottish vernacular style with the harmonious proportions and civilised, ordered grandeur of the neo-Greek.
From its but pleasing granite exterior via its breathtaking Great Hall – one of the noblest interiors in Aberdeenshire – and its exceptional enfilade of State Apartments to its comfortable, spacious and elegant bedrooms overlooking the lawns and parks of the estate, Crimonmogate is one of the most beautiful stately homes in Scotland – grand, but not grandiose.
Mr. and Mrs. Monckton carried out a major programme of restoration at Crimonmogate House between 1996 and 2001 under the guidance of Historic Scotland. For reasons of failing health, Mr. Monckton is now selling the estate, together with some of the contents of Crimonmogate House.
