Dear Bellman,
Historically recorded – “URIE HOUSE is a fine mansion in the Elizabethan style dating from 1855. The residence of Sir Alexander Baird of Urie, Bart., the Lord-Lieutenant of the County it has over 700 acres of finely timbered grounds along Cowie Water on the north side of the Slug Road.”
My father’s law practice did work for several large estates including Urie (now styled Ury), and Rickarton Estates. I still have the numbered “URIE ROLLs” of which ROLL No 5 reveals historic features of the House and estate grounds, such as the fountain in the walled garden, the sun dial, the curling pond, the aviary, the orangery, the kennels, stables and coach-houses, gate-houses and the impressive (later listed) bridge over the Cowie Water.
When John Lawrence Baird (1874-1941) returned from serving as Governor General of Australia, he retired to the ancestral home of Urie House and was created Viscount Stonehaven. He was succeeded by James Ian Baird, the second Viscount Stonehaven, who served as a Major in the Royal Marines in the second world war, but having to sell Urie Estate to pay death duties he resided at Rickarton House on the remaining Rickarton Estate and with whom I had a business association on the estate for a number of years. As James Ian Keith, he later became 12th Earl of Kintore.
From the time the estate was held by Frasers, passed to the Marischal family, the Earl of Errol, the Barclays then purchased by Mr. Alexander Baird of Gartsherrie in 1854 and thereafter as above, Urie House, was never a castle except as a figment of a developer’s imagination which in my view disrespects the grandness of what it once was and the historic grandeur and style it once had indoors and throughout the estate.
Yours sincerely,
John A.A. Agnew