Cultoquhey House in the country of Perth

Cultoquhey House is a large Georgian era country house amid a centuries old garden overlooking the river Earn, two miles from Crieff in the country of Perth, on the southern border of the Scottish Highlands. It is surrounded by woods where roe deer, pheasants and wild rabbits lived.

Cultoquhey House, with an area of 2.000sqm, was built in Tudor style between 1812 and 1827 by architect Sir Robert Smithe, who also worked on the British Museum in London. The building costed 4,000 £ at the time of its erection by order of the XIII Lord of Cultoquhey, Anthony de Maxtone (Mosley, Charles, editor. Burke’s Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage, 107th edition, 3 volumes. Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.A.: Burke’s Peerage – Genealogical Books – Ltd, 2003).

"From the only image found, it was a small compact house with extensions, of modern conception, too small for the families that lived in it, although the standards of comfort in Scotland were until recently quite low. The family crowded a pair of lofts, and the children were pressed like sardines in small bedrooms at night ..." (from the “The Maxtone of Cultoquhey House” di E. Maxtone Graham).

There have been at least three different homes at Cultoquhey. "A fortified tower" is mentioned in a document from 1545. A house was then erected in the XVII century and was inhabited until 1830, when it was demolished by advice of Robert Graham of Redgorton to "get rid of all tax". The current larger home was built between 1822 and 1830 nearby (information taken from an essay by Robert Maxtone Graham).

In 1930 Margaret Oliphant Ethel Blair wrote "the estate is about three miles east of Perth, between the hills Ochil and Grampian. The gaelic name means 'behind the mound of snow”.

The Maxtone family held the estate in unbroken male succession for 600 years. Documents attest their ownership of the lands since before 1410.Robert Maxtone of Coltuquhey fell in the Battle of Flodden in 1513. (The battle of Flodden or Flodden Field was fought near Northumberland in the north of England on the 9th September 1513 between the forces of King James IV of Scotland and the english army led by Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey. It ended with the victory of the British and a bloody defeat of the Scots; it was the biggest battle fought between two countries).

A story is told about the X Lord Mungo Maxtone. Cultoquhey was a small estate amidst the much larger Drummond Castle, Balgowan and Abercairney. These belonged to powerful and aggressive Perth families, which Mungo felt he could not fight. Thus everyday he climbed the hill by the house, from where he could survey the surrounding lands, and said a prayer for protection from his neighbours:

From the greed of the Campbells,
From the ires of the Drummonds,
From the pride of the Grahams,
From the fury of the Murrays,
The good God will set us free.