Bed and breakfast availability
Lumsden b&b, guesthouse and hotel accommodation

Visit Lumsden and the surrounding villages and stay in bed & breakfast accommodation:

Lumsden, Aberdeenshire. This upland village in the Rhynie— Lumsden Gap, the natural passage through the hills from Donside to Strathbogie, was conjured out of a barren moor in 1825 by a local laird, Harry Leith Lumsden of Clova. It has an extensive village green and is otherwise mainly a ribbon development along the main road, but it stands in the centre of a very beautiful and storied countryside.

At nearby Clova there was a monastery said to have been founded by St Moluag from Lismore, while 2 miles North, at the point where the road to Dufftown leaves the level strath and climbs up into the foothills of the Cabrach plateau, is an ancient manorial and church centre of great interest.

Here on neighbouring mounds above the burn stood the Motte of Auchindoir, an earth-and-timber fortress of the Comyns, and the original kirk of Auchindoir, succeeded in the 13^th century by a beautiful stone church on the same site, whose ruins amid the kirkyard are carefully guarded today by the Ministry of Public Building and Works. One of the finest specimens of Transitional or Early First Pointed, its chief glory is the fine door in the South wall with its double round arch and bold First Pointed moulding.

A short distance farther up the Den of Craig, you come upon Craig Castle. The first glimpse of it will be of a forbidding cliff-like block of masonry with tiny windows and a battery of fierce gun-loops, ready to greet any rash attacker with a hail of fire. To the left of this massive 16^th century L-plan tower-house built by the Gordons is a gateway of rusticated ashlar work, erected two centuries later by Francis Gordon, the 8^th Gordon Laird of Craig, in 1726.

Over the door of the Castle in the re-entrant angle of the L-shape are three sunken panels each bearing coats of arms. Just inside the doorway, with its formidable iron yett, is a vaulted vestibule. The ribs meet centrally in a large foliaged boss bearing the Scottish Royal Arms, and shields in the corbel caps of two of these ribs show the three boars' heads of the Gordons and a carving of the Five Wounds of Christ, a theme also represented in the Kirk of Auchindoir. The spiral staircase to the top of the tower has sixty-three steps over 4 ft wide, lit by loop-holes in the North wall. On the first floor is the great hall, with its pipers' gallery (originally a chapel, like the oratory at Towie Barclay), and high up on the South wall of the hall is a shield bearing a coat of arms quartered in tinctures of gules and azure. On either side of the helmet above the shield are the initials F. G. and A. O., standing for Francis Gordon (1686—1716), the 7^th Laird, and his wile Agnes Ogilvie.

Nearby towns: Ballater, Banchory, Dufftown, Huntly, Insch

Nearby villages: Aberdeen, Alford, Auchleven, Badenyon, Bellabeg, Bridge of Alford, Bridgend, Clatt, Clova, Cults, Inverernan, Keig, Kennethmont, Kildrummy, Kirkton of Glenbuchat, Leochel-Cushnie, Leslie, Migvie, Rhynie, Strathdon, Tillyfour, Tough, Towie, Tullynessle, Waterside, Whitehouse

Have you decided to visit Lumsden or the surrounding villages? Please look above for somewhere to stay in:

• a Lumsden bed and breakfast (a Lumsden B&B or Lumsden b and b)
• a Lumsden guesthouse
• a Lumsden hotel (or motel)
• a Lumsden self-catering establishment, or
• other Lumsden accommodation

Accommodation in Lumsden:

Find availability in a Lumsden bed and breakfast, also known as B&B or b and b, guesthouse, small hotel, self-catering or other accommodation.