Blair Collection > Place names in Strathbogie, with notes historical, antiquarian and descriptive

Place Names in Strathbone.
landed proprietors of the North for nearly 300
years, but in the latter half of the 1 8th century
they drop out of sight without leaving record of
the disaster which had befallen them. In the
Inventory of Charters in Gordon Castle there is
this significant entry — ' Newton-garie, Drum-
blade, bought by the Duke of Gordon in 1765
from Sir Alexander Gordon of Lesmoir, and his
Trustees and Creditors.' From the same source,
we learn that Corvichen was purchased from Sir
Wm. Gordon of Lesmoir by Andrew Hay of
Mountblairy, anno 1739, and sold by George
Hay, his son, to the Duke of Gordon in 1770.
Finally, we learn that the lands of Essie and
Lesmoir were purchased by the Duke of Gordon,
in 1780, from the Trustees of John Grant of
Rothmaise, who a few years previously had
bought them from the last of the Gordons of
Lesmoir. The only memorial of the old family
is the ruin of the Castle of Lesmoir, of which
little remains but unshapely masses of masonry
overgrown by vegetation. Though compara-
tively small, the castle seems to have been of
considerable strength, with an outer defence and
moat, which can still be distinctly traced.
' THE AUCHT AND FORTY DAUCH.'
In a manuscript preserved in the library at
Slains, and given in the Spal. CI. Ant. II., p. 164,