Two in a Tower

Continuing the theme of the Footsteps Through Fraserburgh project, today's Blip features Kinnaird Head Lighthouse and the enigmatic Wine Tower. The lighthouse sits atop the towerhouse built in the 16th century for the Frasers of Philorth. The lighthouse was added in 1787 and was the first lighthouse built by the Commissioners of the Northern Lighthouses.

Close by is the mysterious Wine Tower, the name is misleading since it is now thought not to have been the castle Wine cellar but to have contained a private Chapel for the use of of the Laird's Roman Catholic wife. The room at the top of the tower contains elaborately carved stone bosses associated with Catholic chapels of the period.

A colourful legend suggests that it was used as a prison for a daughter of the laird and her piper lover of whom the laird disapproved. The lovers were both imprisoned in the 3 storey tower, the piper in the lowest room into which the sea poured at high tide. The daughter was in a higher room and when she heard her drowning lover's cries threw herself to her death onto the jagged rocks.

Until the lighthouse was decommissioned the lighthouse keepers used to perpetuate this story by splashing a can of red paint onto the rocks.