Gardens

Below is an article from Country Life (October 19th 2006).

Fine Frolics at Fingask Tim Longville explores a remarkable Perthshire estate where generations of exuberant owners have left their indelible mark, oblivious to passing fashions

Fingask Castle is perched on a rocky hillside above the flat plain of the Carse of Gowrie, midway between Perth and Dundee. Its situation offers extensive views out to the Firth of Tay and the Fife hills, and its ancient garden offers engaging oddity. Throughout the centuries, little attention has been paid here to the fashion of the day. Fingask has always done its own thing, sometimes behind the times, sometimes in advance of them, mostly ignoring them completely.

The present castle is late 16th century. Originally a Bruce house, it soon by marriage became – and with intervals, has remained – a Threipland one. The first two intervals occurred when this then obstinately Catholic and Jacobite family was deprived of its lands for supporting both the Old and then the Young Pretender. The third was when present owner Andrew Threipland’s grandfather sold the estate in 1912, after which it remained out of the family until Mr Threipland’s elder brother, Mark, bought it back in 1965.

Serious gardening probably began here in the late 17th century when Sir Patrick Threipland and his splendidly named second wife, Eupheme Conqueror, created what is known as The Parade. This long, level grass promenade, in front and to the side of the house, was a very necessary addition to a site where level ground was not naturally abundant. It commands views both down the burn-filled valley below, and out to the extensive views beyond. Sir Patrick and Eupheme are also recorded as having planted many box-trees, hollies and yews, which, tradition has it, became the first examples of Fingask’s characteristically unpretentious and unusual topiary.

The Jacobite risings and their consequences disrupted life here for much of the 18th century. Towards the end of it, however, Sir Stuart Threipland and his immediate successors took the garden simultaneously in two different directions.

Sir Stuart’s major innovation was to dam the burn at the top of the valley (known as The Dell), prior to planting large-scale commercial orchards on its sides. Even in the mid 19th century, these were being ‘rouped’ (that is, the fruit sold on the trees) for £100 or more, which, as Mr Threipland points out a touch enviously, ‘would in those days probably have covered most of the estate’s running costs for the year’. A few of those old trees still survive, but in recent years, first Mark Threipland, and now his brother have acknowledged that element in the garden’s past by planting smaller ‘private’ orchard areas closer to the house. This has always been remarkable fruit country and Mr Threipland jokes that his wife, Helen, hates the plum trees: ‘They just produce so much fruit’.

Also in the 19th century, an appreciation began of Fingask’s Picturesque possibilities. A belvedere (the ruins of which still survive) was built on the hillside above the castle to command even more of the views, and The Dell’s romantic back story – it is home to St Peter’s Well, reputedly a stopping place for medieval pilgrims en route to Queen Margaret’s shrine at Dunkeld – became increasingly important. In addition, for several decades, much ornamental tree planting was undertaken, to emphasise the craggy beauty of the landscape, and many of the mid-19th-century conifers particularly have now made imposing specimens. There was never much herbaceous prettiness here. The nature of the site largely forbade it. In the ringing phrase of David Gorrie, writing about Fingask in The Scottish Gardener in 1854: ‘The rural Picturesque is the style of adornment that prevails’.

Some of those adornments were not so much Picturesque as just plain odd. Oddest of all are Fingask’s life-sized statues. Carved from single pieces of granite and later covered in a cement wash, these are naïvely realistic pieces of folk art. ‘Children love them,’ laughs Mr Threipland, ‘but Gavin Stamp, the architectural historian, thought they were the nastiest things he’d ever seen.’ Many commemorate scenes from the works of Burns (Tam O’Shanter and his wife, Kate, and the Three Jolly Beggars), his disciple Alexander Wilson (Watty and Meg) and Scott (the Last Minstrel). Their main creator was apparently a Dundee man, Peter Anderson, who had a local reputation and even exhibited his work as far afield as Liverpool. (Some of the later ones may have been by Anderson’s son.) There is no firm evidence for the date of their creation. They are usually assumed to have been made in the 1840’s, but the presence among them of a statue of Pitt the Younger may make an earlier date more likely.

Originally, all of the statues were assembled in a line outside the castle. And they were accompanied by equally quirky pieces of topiary. The latter have no overall plan (although one group is said to represent the crown jewels), but their drunken leanings and asymmetrical whirls must have increased the general air of mild surrealism. The topiary survives, but many of the statues have been moved by Mr Threipland to become vista-stoppers – Pitt at one end of The Parade, for example, the Three Jolly Beggars at the other. ‘I thought that, as they were, they looked like a graveyard. It is not,’ he adds firmly, ‘a decision I have regretted for a moment.’

Mr Threipland has also restored several sections of the garden. He has rescued parts of the early-20th-century water garden in The Dell, for example, splitting and redistributing mighty clumps of bamboo and building a new ‘Chinese’ bridge across the burn. True to the Fingask tradition, however, he has also made his own quirky additions, including an open-sided copper-domed belvedere at the top of The Dell. Its dome doubles as an upper floor, with miniature windows inserted. ‘It’s my refuge for when the children become too importunate – although, of course, they’re convinced it’s really theirs.’

He has also been responsible for one splendid addition to the social life of Fingask and the surrounding area, an addition of which his ancestors would surely have approved. The Fingask Follies is an annual revue. It involves four professional singers and two actors, and is performed in late May and June both at Fingask itself and at big houses and small theatres throughout Scotland and England. ‘It’s a return to the tradition of drawing-room entertainment,’ says Helen Threipland, its producer. ‘It’s not just Verdi to a piano, but an entirely original revue, which includes some old songs and poetry, but also some new and specially commissioned pieces.’ Each year, there is a new theme. The one for 2006, for example, was ‘Crumpet – or We Are What We Eat,’ whose theme was ‘food, with an occasional swipe in the direction of sexual desire!’ Country life dull? A joke, surely.

Fingask, Rait, Perthshire. For information about its self-catering accommodation, cottages, celebrationsm, wedding venues in Scotland or the Fingask Follies, telephone 01821 670777 or visit the castle’s website at www.fingaskcastle.com
Photographs by Val Corbett.
October 19, 2006.