Southern Walled Garden, Dunbeath Castle

The Southern Walled Garden is part of Dunbeath Castle, a building with origins in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, likely incorporating earlier fabric, and significantly altered and extended around 1881 by D & J Bryce. The garden is enclosed by a substantial retaining terrace wall that forms a U-shape around a peninsular site.

The castle itself is largely harled with ashlar margins and dressings. The symmetrical, north-eastern front has two storeys and an attic, arranged over five bays, with long, angled bartizans topped with bellcast conical roofs. A later 19th-century round-headed doorpiece features a cable-moulded hoodmould, terminating with a simulated knot flanked by shot holes, and at the first floor, bowed stair turrets projecting and topped with decorative corbelled bases and square gabled caphouses. The windows are regularly placed, with smaller windows on the third floor and three ornately pedimented dormers punctuating the wallhead. The Sinclair family coat of arms is displayed in a panel set into the right stair turret. A square tower rises from the north-east angle, featuring a corbelled and crenellated parapet extending above the ridge line. Asymmetrical additions, two storeys and an attic in height, extend to the south-east, incorporating an angle window, a turret, pedimented dormers, and a first-floor oriel at the north-east. The windows are largely 12-pane sashes, with margined end, ridge and wallhead stacks. Slate roofs cover the structure, with crowsteps visible.

Two walled gardens flank the approach drive, each enclosed by coped rubble walls. The southern garden incorporates various reused stone carvings, including a 17th-century chimney piece. Within the north walled garden stands a single-storey, five-bay former laundry, constructed of rubble with tooled dressings. It has a central door with a semi-circular fanlight, paired round-headed windows in the outer bays, paired windows in the east gable, multi-pane glazing, round dormer vents, corniced end stacks, and a slate roof.

The garden and castle were formerly the seat of the Sinclairs of Dunbeath, and an armorial shield displays the Sinclair and Innes crests along with the motto "Via crucis, via lucis, patientia vinco”.