Culloden House Culloden House was the centre
of a very big estate providing employment throughout the centuries
for many Invernesians. They farmed and/or rented out the lands,
feeding themselves and their households from the produce of their
lands and the three acre walled garden planted with fruit trees
and vegetable, selling the surplus in the nearby markets of Inverness
and Nairn for ready cash. This would have been spent on the house
of Culloden itself or on purchasing the fine foreign goods such
as silks and satins, ports and wines, without which a noble lifestyle
was not possible.
Culloden first appears on record in the early 13th century, circa
1232, when it is mentioned in a charter of the Bishops of Moray,
based in Elgin. By the end of the 14th century it had passed into
the ownership of the notorious "Wolf of Badenoch", Alexander Stewart,
a younger son of the the first Stuart monarch, Robert II. He was
notorious for his burning of the burghs of Forres and Elgin, with
Elgin Cathedral, in 1390, as part of a feud with then then Bishop
of Moray, Alexander Bur. The impressive remains of his main stronghold,
Lochindorb Castle, can still be seen on an island in Lochindorb,
just 28 miles south of Inverness on the road to Grantown on Spey.
The lands of Culloden remained with the royal family until 1455
when they appear in the hands of a trusted royal servant Williamson
Edmondson, described as "of Culloden" in that year. The Edmundsons
were a lowland family, with lands largely in Stirlingshire - this
grant of lands in the Highlands to them was part of a concerted
attempt by King James II to isolate the powerful Douglas family,
who held wide lands in the area, and were considered a threat by
the king.
The Edmundsons were absentee landlords who leased out their lands
in the north to local families: the first on record were the Strachans,
who by 1506 had become the owners of the estate of Culloden. It
is they who were probably the builders of the first Culloden House
or castle, which is described in a document of 1634, when the estate
comprised the lands of Easter, Mid and Wester Culloden, as the "castle,
manor place, mill and fishings of Culloden" .
This earlier house was designed in a castellated style, and Timothy
Pont's cartographical manuscript of 1595 shows it with two square
towers apparently protected by barmkin wall. This house was purchased
by Duncan Forbes from Lachlan Mor, the 16th Chief of MacIntosh,
who had himself acquired the house in 1576 from George Strachan.
Duncan Forbes, or Duncan of the Skins, as he was popularly known
because he may have been in the fur trade, was born in 1572. he
became the Provost of Inverness (mayor) and MP for the Burgh. He
undoubtedly bought Culloden House in 1625 with the money earned
from the fur trade. Thus began nearly three hundred years of association
of the Forbes family with Culloden