Robert Adam’s first house in Scotland after he returned from his Grand Tour, Letterfourie is a three-bay-fronted mansion built in 1772/3: Adam’s drawings for it are currently in the Sir John Soane’s Museum in London.
The dignified exterior houses interior features including a fascinating yellow and white marble chimney piece in the drawing room, Adam fireplace surrounds and original window shutters in the principal bedrooms, and Spanish mahogany doors from Madeira. The west wing has a chapel (the Gordons who built the house were Roman Catholic and Jacobites) with accommodation above for a priest; the house was known as a ‘safe house’ during the Act of Proscription, identified by a white rose in the garden, which, it is believed, also marked the location of an escape passage, the other end of which is said to be at the base of the Category A listed Craigmin Bridge, to the south west of the house on the original south drive.
* Subscribe to Country Life and save £40%
The main house itself is Category A listed, and accommodation is extensive, and divided between the main house and the east and west wings. There are four principal reception rooms, five further reception rooms and eleven bedrooms in the property and the interiors are relatively untouched.
Outside are a garage and seven undercrofts. Around the property are six small lawns with various flowering shrubs and bushes. Larger grassy areas contain fruit trees and there are carpets of snowdrops, daffodils and bluebells in the spring. The fountains in the south garden are listed, and southeast of here is the former tennis court.
Trees in the parkland include horse chestnut, aspen, elm, larch, norway spruce and beech. The estate also has policy woods and commercial plantings and the shooting is currently let on an annual basis – within the woods are a well and an ice house and it here here that planning consent was granted in 2000 for a two-bedroom cottage.
The agricultural land has good cereal yields, and there is grazing for up to 700 sheep (500 rare breed Soay sheep are available for separate purchase). Cropping is let to an organic farmer. The land in total comes to over 300 acres.
Letterfourie is just three miles from the Moray Firth coastline in the north of Scotland, between Aberdeen and Inverness. Buckie (three miles) has good amenities, and both Aberdeen (65 miles) and Inverness (57 miles) have international airports.
The guide price is £1.755m. For further information please contact Savills on 01356 628 628 or visit www.savills.co.uk.
* Country houses for sale in Scotland
* Follow us on Twitter
