ROSEHEARTY AND PITSLIGO CASTLE

Located on the south shore of the Moray Firth, Rosehearty was probably first settled by shipwrecked Danish fishermen in the 1300s. If you google the name Rosehearty, you might be perplexed at the appearance of Rupert Murdoch among the results. This is because he has a yacht called Rosehearty, presumably in memory of his ancestor the Australian academic Sir Walter Murdoch, who hailed from these parts. His home in New York also bears the name. Rosehearty still has an active harbour, with the appropriately named area of Fishertown bordering it, with its fishermen's cottages.

Pitsligo Castle, a short distance inland, was built by the Fraser family in 1424, and the following century was enlarged by the Forbes family. Following the Battle of Culloden, the castle was pillaged by Hanoverian troops, and it fell into a decline until the formation of the Pitsligo Castle Trust in 1995 with the aim of looking after the castle and establishing a centre in the former Pitsligo Parish Kirk to tell the story of the Jacobites and the history of Scottish heraldry.

Map of the area.

Small boats in Rosehearty Harbour - geograph.org.uk - 562433. Photo by David Hawgood, via Wikimedia Commons.