Balvenie Castle

This ancient stronghold of the Comyns, visited by Edward I in 1304, belonged subsequently to the Black Douglases and the Stewart Earls of Atholl, and was visited by Queen Mary in 1562. It had a disturbed history during the wars of the seventeenth century, and was occupied by the Hanoverians in 1746. Its great enclosing curtain wall, with a rock-hewn ditch, is a work of the Comyn period, but most of the existing buildings were erected in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This is one of the largest and best preserved castles in the north of Scotland. A remarkable feature is the two-leaved iron yett. Located at Dufftown.