Balbegno Castle

Balbegno Castle is a late 16th century L-plan tower house, dated "Ano 1569 IWOD and E IRVEIN". The walls are harled with stone dressings at the upper levels. The unusual L-plan is oriented so the external angle points south. A re-entrant tower fills the angle of the L and rises one storey higher than the main block, featuring a rounded corner and an elaborate figured window. The main block is three storeys high with an attic, while the wing is the same height but incorporates a mezzanine corresponding to the area of a vault. The wing has a corbelled parapet decorated with head medallions and angle rounds, and the main block has a simple roof with crowstepped gables.

The ground floor is vaulted, and a wide circular stair leads to the first floor. The first floor hall measures 29 feet 6 inches by 19 feet 6 inches and is rib-vaulted in two compartments with sculptured corbels and bosses. The compartments are painted with armorial bearings, partially restored by Alfred P Nixon in Edinburgh in 1900. A two-storey, three-window wing, dating from the later 18th century, features close-spaced 12-pane sash windows. A single-storey Venetian porch fills the space between the re-entrant angle and the 18th century wing.

The castle is an outstanding example of its type, related to Gight, Delgatie, Craig, and Towie Barclay, particularly Towie Barclay, whose hall is modelled in plan and dimensions on Balbegno’s. Stewart Cruden has linked the figure sculptures, which include a dummy window depicting Huntly with a carved figure looking out, to those at Edzell, indicating a very early 17th-century date. The medallions are also comparable to those at Craigston. MacGibbon & Ross believed the main block's roof to be of a later date, probably the late 17th or early 18th century, though a similar arrangement, reputedly completed at the very end of the 16th century, occurs at Delgatie. It forms a group with items 4, 5, 6, and 7.