| Details |
Cottage, built circa 1834-35 and known locally as the 'Swiss Cottage'. It is a two storey, single bay, red painted rectangular weather-boarded timber cottage, built in the Alpine style. The entrance is at the rear. The northeast gable projects, and is supported by square wooden posts carried up through a jettied gable frontage incorporated in the framework. It has a flat balustered balcony supported on brackets which wraps round the first floor side elevations and the southwest gable. There are single 2-light multi-pane glazed windows with wooden shutters in each elevation on either the ground or first floor. It has a red tiled roof and ridge, with deep eaves supported by shaped wooden brackets, with a tooled ashlar coped ridge stack. There is much carved detailing to be seen in the timber work, mainly geometric forms and billet moulding, and decorated return gables. Anecdotal evidence talks of Swiss Cottage being built 'to try and make a valued Swiss employee feel at home and remain in the Duke's employment'. Documentary evidence seems to support this theory - records exist of a Jean Pierre Ansermet, born in 1792 in Switzerland, who entered the service of the 5th Duke of Gordon in 1815, the same year that the Duke received the Freedom of the City of Geneva. In 1836, Ansermet was listed as deer park keeper at Gordon Castle (NJ35NW0010). The Swiss Cottage is situated right at the edge of the deer park at the Gordon Estate. It is probably the oldest surviving timber framed and timber clad structure in Scotland, built of native softwoods. Restored in 2012.
|
Historic Environment Records (HER) 
Moray
HER -
NJ35NE0026 - SWISS COTTAGE, BELLIE