Historic Places in Perthshire

Ruthven Barracks near Kingussie in the Cairngorm area of the Highlands are the most impressive and most atmospheric surviving example of the military barracks built by the British government in the Scottish Highlands following the Jacobite Rising of 1715, a substantial stone fortification on an ancient motte that stands in dramatic isolation in the Spey Valley and whose gaunt and roofless state makes it one of the most evocative military ruins in Scotland. Historic Environment Scotland manages the barracks, which are freely accessible to visitors. The barracks were built between 1719 and 1721 on the site of a castle associated with the Lords of Badenoch, the great medieval landholders of this area, to house a garrison of government troops whose purpose was to overawe the Highland population and prevent the movement of arms and men through the Spey valley, a key route through the Highland interior. The building withstood an attack by Jacobite forces during the 1745 Rising but was captured and destroyed by the retreating Jacobite army in February 1746, two months before the final defeat at Culloden. The final act at Ruthven Barracks was one of the most poignant moments of the Jacobite cause. Several thousand Highland soldiers assembled here after Culloden in the hope that Bonnie Prince Charlie would continue the struggle, the embers of the Rising still burning in the days immediately after the defeat. The message they received from the Prince, advising each man to seek his own safety as best he could, effectively ended the '45 and the soldiers dispersed across the Highlands to whatever fate awaited them. The setting of the barracks on their motte in the wide Spey Valley, with the Cairngorm mountains visible to the east and the Monadhliath to the west, is one of the finest Highland landscape settings of any historic monument.

Scone Palace near Perth in Perthshire is one of Scotland's most historically significant royal sites, standing on the location where the kings of Scotland were crowned for nearly a thousand years from the ninth century to the reign of Charles II in 1651. The Stone of Destiny, the ancient coronation stone of the Scottish kings, stood at Scone until its removal by Edward I of England in 1296, an act of deliberate cultural humiliation that was reversed only in 1996 when the stone was returned to Scotland after seven centuries in Westminster Abbey. The stone now rests in Edinburgh Castle, but Scone retains the authority of its extraordinary history as the seat of Scottish royal investiture. The current palace was built between 1803 and 1813 for the third Earl of Mansfield in the Gothic Revival style fashionable among Scottish landed proprietors of the period, replacing an earlier building that incorporated the remains of the historic palace on the same site. The resulting Gothic Revival building of considerable scale and quality houses collections of furniture, paintings, porcelain and decorative objects of outstanding importance, assembled by successive Earls of Mansfield over three centuries of aristocratic collecting and reflecting both the family's wealth and their connection through their legal careers to the highest levels of British society. The palace is still the home of the Mansfield family and is open to visitors throughout the summer season. The state rooms contain remarkable pieces including Louis XVI furniture, Sèvres porcelain, needlework by Mary Queen of Scots and a collection of ivories of international quality. The grounds include a pinetum, a maze and the Moot Hill where the coronation ceremonies were conducted, a small artificial mound of such historical significance that visiting it provides a direct connection to the entire sweep of Scottish royal history.