New Spalding Club > Thanage of Fermartyn including the district commonly called Formartine

TH E GORDONS
OF
H A D D O AND M E T H L I C K
NOW REPRESENTED BY
THE EARL OF ABERDEEN.
" FoRTUNA Sequatur." " Ne Nimium.
Haddo House is a spacious and elegant mansion in the Palladian style, built after
designs by Baxter, of Edinburgh ; enlarged in 1880, and a chapel by Mr. Street, of
London, added. The policies are of great extent and of much beauty. The paintings in
the house are very interesting. Besides specimens of many of the Continental schools,
there are portraits of all the Earls, and of Sir John Gordon, who suffered for his
loyalty to Charles I. According to Dr. Skene-Keith" of Keithhall, it had a deer park,
in his time, one hundred and twenty years old.
The site of the old house of Kelly is not known, for both name and situation have
been changed. It is believed to have been at some distance from the present mansion.
The first acquisition by the Gordon family was a portion of Haddo, after that the
" Two Methlicks," then a portion of Kelly, and gradually the whole merged and consoli-
dated into one property of Haddo and Methlick.
The earliest notice of Methlick, or "Methlayk," is about the beginning of the
fourteenth century.
13 — . There is a charter by John de Barclay, Lord of Pitnacaldore, to William de
Camera, Lord of Auchnaways, of all the lands of Methlayk in the shire of Aberdeen, to
be held of the King i>i capite, sealed with the seal of William de Fotheringay, knight.=
^ In 1378, there is a charter by Robert III., King of Scotland, to his esquire David
Foulerton, for his faithful service, of the lands of the "Two Methlaykis," which were
1. Keith's Survey, p. loi. ^
2. Historical MSS. Commission Report, Vol. I., p. 608. "