Series 1 > Tours in Scotland 1747, 1750, 1760

SPYNIE.
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that appear like plough furrows, and seem to have been made
successively as the Sea retired; There is the same appearance
of Sand banks and gravelly banks of the Sea all the way to
Pluscardin, so that it seems to have formed a sort of Lough
between the land untill it retired some ages after the flood.
I came to the Castle of Spigny,1 finely situated over the
South Side of Lough Spigney: It originally seemed to have
consisted of a Chapel1 on one side, with a small strong square
tower to retire to in time of Danger, and a hall on the other
with a high building of seven apartments to the East of the
gate; but Bishop David Stewart having been threatened by
Alexander Lord Huntley built that noble Castle, which with a
little more building adjoyning to it, and what was built before,
encloses the whole court, the walls are ten feet thick; it con¬
sists of six floors about 24 by 40 feet with several closets
practiced in the Walls which range all round ; at top there is
an Arch, & one over the ground floor, and one over the highest
room but one ; all being covered with a roof: it is built of hewn
freestone inside and out; over the Entrance to the court are
the Bishops Arms with a Crosier for the Crest: On the Tower
are the Arms of the Royal family, with a Ducal Coronet resting
on the back of a Couchant unicorn; under this are the other
arms; there is a Mitre on one of them, if not on both.
On the Height to the North West are remains2 of a Church
which they say was the Ancient Cathedral, and afterwards a
parish Church.
This Lake3 is four miles long and half a mile broad, there
are swans always on it which breed in the Islands and there are
very large pike in the Lough.—I am, &c.
1 For plans and views of Spynie Palace, see MacGibbon and Ross’s Castellated
Architecture of Scotland, 1887, vol. i. pp. 439-445.
2 The last of the remains, a Gothic gable, fell about 1850, and now all trace
of the old Cathedral is gone.
3 Loch of Spynie is now drained. See the interesting account of the reclama¬
tion in Young’s The Parish of Spynie, pp. 5-36.