| Lady Kennedy of Dunnottar - probably one of the last
members of that particular famous Mearns branch of
the Allardice family - certainly left a mark with her
famed al-fresco bath still there for you to see in the
Dunnottar Woods. She dammed up the Glasslaw Burn,
which runs through the valley at the eastern woods, but
when you look at it you have to wonder what she did
about peepers but perhaps she just did not care! |
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Lady Dunnottar had the weird Shell Housey (a ruined
grotto behind the Dunnottar
Gardens) built and studded
with rank upon rank of
lovely sea shells - why? |
| Then there is the tale told
of the heroism shown by the
Lady of Durris after the
treacherous Duke of Montrose turned against the
family's hospitality and
ruined them completely. She
came back as a ghost and
seems to have caused the
haughty Duke plenty of
trouble - he was hung, drawn
and quartered in the end!
further south in the St Cyrus
area. |
It was she, who so affected
the 19th century poet George Beattie, that when
she dumped him for another man he went to the St
Cyrus Kirk yard armed with a pistol -and blew
his brains to kingdom come. This act brought him
fame - and his family a fortune. |
| Fettercairn's fair Williamina Belsches
turned down
the aspiring writer Sir Walter
Scott. In art, a rejection is
often said to inspire - and she
may have had this effect on
Sir Waiter to become the
giant figure in literature he
still is (proof is the recent TV serialisation of his novel
"Ivanhoe")!
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