Haddo House

Haddo House is home to a branch of the Gordon family who became Earls, and later Marquesses of Aberdeen. They have lived on the site for over 500 years, but the house seen today was built in 1732 for the second Earl to replace the old towerhouse castle which stood nearby but had become largely ruinous. On the 4th Marquess' death in 1974 the House and formal gardens were made over to the National Trust for Scotland on the condition that his widow, Lady June, could continue to live here. Around 200 acres of the wider landscaped policies were opened as a Country Park which is owned and run by Aberdeenshire Council. The family still retains a substantial interest and estate surrounding the House and Grounds.

The House was designed in 1732 by the leading Scottish architect of the day, William Adam for William, second Earl of Aberdeen. Executed in the fashionable Palladian style, it comprised a central block of family accommodation flanked by two outlying wings to house servants and kitchens, and stables, the whole connected by curving colonnades. In the 1820s Aberdeen architect Archibald Simpson was employed by the fourth Earl to build a new Stable Block well away from the House, extend the domestic wing, and create enclosed corridors from the colonnades. The seventh Earl and Countess employed the Edinburgh firm Wardrop and Reid in the 1880s to enlarge the south wing to create a family block re-organise the front entrance area with a new porch and stairwell and make major internal space changes. They also employed George E Street to add a neo-Gothic Chapel to the North Wing. A fire in 1930 saw the virtual destruction of the south wing and domestic offices, and necessitated a more modest rebuilding scheme.

Very little is known about the original 1730s interior of Haddo: the only remnant would appear to be some fine panelling extant in the Ante-Room. Ongoing research however, is revealing that the house was very much at the height of fashion with luxurious fittings, which very much reflected the family's status as premier landowners in the area. The feel of the house at present is very much that which it was given by the London firm Wright & Mansfield who were commissioned in the 1880s by the seventh Earl and Countess to completely redecorate and refurnish Haddo. They worked in an (Robert) Adam-revival style inserting fine plaster ceilings where there were none, fitting new mahogany doors and neo-classical cases, and devising sumptuous and subtle colour schemes throughout the house revolving round pale blues and pinks, crimsons, stone colours and gilding. They also supplied most soft furnishings - many of which survive in their original settings. The National Trust for Scotland has a rolling policy of investigating the original Wright & Mansfield designs where these have been lost under post World War II redecorations.

Both the fourth and fifth Earls of Aberdeen were noted for their fine artistic tastes and collections, but sadly many of their prime pieces have been lost on the selling of their other houses and estates throughout the nineteenth century. However, some very fine paintings remain including works by Morales, Salvator Rosa, Van Dyck, John Norrie, James Giles and John Russell, and the house is particularly well-endowed with excellent family portraits amongst which are a Batoni, several Lawrences, Pattens, and Carpenters. Several members of the family were, and are, talented artists themselves, and examples of their work hang throughout the house. Interspersed with the comfortable 1880s furniture supplied by Wright & Mansfield are some earlier pieces of note including early nineteenth century bergeres, eighteenth century French commodes, a sliver table by John Channon, and mirrors after Thomas Vardy. The house also boasts a collection of fine porcelain, silver-gilt and glassware.

The Gordons of Haddo rose to prominence in the mid and late seventeenth century when their Royalist sympathies resulted in execution and forfeiture under the Covenanters, and consequent honours and position on the restoration of Charles II. The first two earls were fiercely Jacobite but their papers were deliberately destroyed just after 1745 before any repercussions could be meted out by the Hanoverian establishment. The fourth Earl (b1784 d.1860) was a truly universal man, being nicknamed 'the Athenian Aberdeen' for his extraordinary academic abilities with the classics, 'the Improving Earl' for his single minded determination to turn the barren moors of his Haddo Estate into the glorious, tree surrounded, rolling agricultural plain it is today, and 'the Premier Earl' after his 40 year long political career which saw him Ambassador in Vienna during the Napoleonic Wars, Secretary of State for War, Secretary for the Colonies, Foreign Minister and ultimately Prime Minister 1852-55. He was also a close friend of Queen Victoria to whom he proposed she take Balmoral as a Royal retreat. The seventh Earl held many offices and titles including Governor-General of Canada and Vice-Roy of Ireland, and was rewarded by being raised to the Marquessate in 1917. He and his wife Ishbel - collectively dubbed 'We Twa' - are greatly remembered for their social campaigning and philanthropic works including the setting up of tuberculosis hospitals, schools, churches improvement associations for tenants and servants, and their real interest in the personal issues which involved all they met. Ishbel is also particularly held in esteem for her work with women's causes through the International Council of Women. Lady June, fourth Marchioness - still resident - is a professionally trained musician and is known for her work in establishing Haddo as a cultural centre in the North East of Scotland.

Almost nothing is known about Haddo's gardens until the time of the fourth Earl of Aberdeen who vastly improved the estates throughout the 1820s and 30s. There is the remnant of an avenue of ash trees adjacent to what is now the South Wing of the house, believed to have been planted by the first Earl in the 1680s when the family still occupied their towerhouse of Kellie on the site. The formal terrace to the east of the house was raised at the same time as the house itself was built in the 1730s, but there is absolutely no reference extant as to its plantings. The fourth Earl is believed to be responsible for setting out the present formal arrangements of flowerbeds on the terrace and flanking borders below, along with planting the great lime tree avenue leading to the country park beyond the garden. From the paintings in the house we know that the beds contained mixtures of herbaceous and annual plants - not the formal rose plantings in existence today. Throughout the tenure of the fourth Earl and seventh Earl, many commemorative and specimen trees were planted in and around the garden - including two sequoiadendron giganteum planted by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1857 - many of which still bear their original lead plaques. Late nineteenth century photographs show the formal beds on the Terrace planted with annuals grouped around cabbage palms and ornamental grasses.

The garden seen today was very much established after World War II by June, fourth Marchioness, with much help from her father. During the war many of the beds had been given over to vegetables and have since been completely replanted: the most striking difference being that the formal beds on the terrace are now given over to roses, bordered with violas and underplanted with tulips and narcissi for spring interest. The two long herbaceous borders flanking the terrace are very much in the Victorian style and are planted to give variety and interest in the garden as well as to provide flowers for display in the House. To the north of the Terrace the Trust has recently planted a number of rare conifers as part of the conifer conservation programme run by the Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. Those selected for Haddo were all introduced to Britain in the 1850s - the same decade that Victoria and Albert planted the sequoiadendron giganteum nearby.

The 200 acres of the park owned and run by Aberdeenshire Council and accessible to the public is only a very small portion of the wider landscape design which the fourth Earl of Aberdeen undertook across the whole Estate in the first half of the 19th century. On taking up his inheritance in 1805 and seeing Haddo for the first time since but a small boy he was appalled at its lack of beauty - there were virtually no trees and, apart from the formal terrace and remnants of the first Earl's ash avenue, the lands around were unimproved and consisted of mainly bogs and moorland interspersed with pockets of poor farmland. Persuaded to improve his estate by his father in law, the fourth Earl employed James Giles to design the plantations, walks, lakes and avenues which now grace the landscape around Haddo.

The project was an extensive one, involving the creation of three large lakes (only one of which is accessible to the public),numerous carriage rides which would have afforded romantic and picturesque vistas and glimpses of the surrounding countryside, several plantations of cash and amenity woodland, and two formal avenues. The fourth Earl also had a large ornamental urn erected to the memory of his first wife and three daughters who all died of tuberculosis, two statues of deer at the head of the Deer Park, a folly by the edge of one of the lakes and an obelisk to the memory of his brother who was killed at the Battle of Waterloo. Indeed his extensive landscape projects earned him the nickname of 'the Improving Earl'.

Haddo House has no set educational programme - each visit is treated as a 'one off' and tailored to meet teacher's needs.

For more information about making a visit to Haddo House, please contact the Property Manager on 01651 851440.

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