the history of culloden house

Breif History | The History Of Culloden House | The Battle Of Culloden

Culloden House was the centre of a very big estate providing employment throughout the centuries for many Invernesians. They farmed and/or rented out the lands, feeding themselves and their households from the produce of their lands and the three acre walled garden planted with fruit trees and vegetable, selling the surplus in the nearby markets of Inverness and Nairn for ready cash. This would have been spent on the house of Culloden itself or on purchasing the fine foreign goods such as silks and satins, ports and wines, without which a noble lifestyle was not possible.

Culloden first appears on record in the early 13th century, circa 1232, when it is mentioned in a charter of the Bishops of Moray, based in Elgin. By the end of the 14th century it had passed into the ownership of the notorious "Wolf of Badenoch", Alexander Stewart, a younger son of the the first Stuart monarch, Robert II. He was notorious for his burning of the burghs of Forres and Elgin, with Elgin Cathedral, in 1390, as part of a feud with then then Bishop of Moray, Alexander Bur. The impressive remains of his main stronghold, Lochindorb Castle, can still be seen on an island in Lochindorb, just 28 miles south of Inverness on the road to Grantown on Spey.

The lands of Culloden remained with the royal family until 1455 when they appear in the hands of a trusted royal servant Williamson Edmondson, described as "of Culloden" in that year. The Edmundsons were a lowland family, with lands largely in Stirlingshire - this grant of lands in the Highlands to them was part of a concerted attempt by King James II to isolate the powerful Douglas family, who held wide lands in the area, and were considered a threat by the king.

The Edmundsons were absentee landlords who leased out their lands in the north to local families: the first on record were the Strachans, who by 1506 had become the owners of the estate of Culloden. It is they who were probably the builders of the first Culloden House or castle, which is described in a document of 1634, when the estate comprised the lands of Easter, Mid and Wester Culloden, as the "castle, manor place, mill and fishings of Culloden".

This earlier house was designed in a castellated style, and Timothy Pont's cartographical manuscript of 1595 shows it with two square towers apparently protected by barmkin wall. This house was purchased by Duncan Forbes from Lachlan Mor, the 16th Chief of MacIntosh, who had himself acquired the house in 1576 from George Strachan. Duncan Forbes, or Duncan of the Skins, as he was popularly known because he may have been in the fur trade, was born in 1572. he became the Provost of Inverness (mayor) and MP for the Burgh. He undoubtedly bought Culloden House in 1625 with the money earned from the fur trade. Thus began nearly three hundred years of association of the Forbes family with Culloden.