The Project and its Impact

Our conservation project is focused on caring for a spectacular and much-loved asset by sympathetic repair, improving visitor facilities to create a contemporary and comfortable visitor experience and presenting the fascinating collections of objects to best reveal their engaging stories. The themes of a visit encompass Clans and Culture, Rivals, Risings and Redcoats and Hunting, Hosting and Haute Couture.

Raising the Standard will entirely renew the Castle as a visitor destination by improving visitor facilities: creating a new reception which sets the context of a visit, provides new interpretation, explaining what the visitor sees in the Castle and grounds (linking them to and interpreting the Highland landscape); conserving the collections, enhancing the way in which they are described and their significance explained; improving visitor access and upgrading services throughout and providing new disabled toilets; re-harling the exterior with traditional lime-based materials; renewing windows and repairing drainage and the courtyard.

The small and remote village of Braemar has in recent years punched well above its weight in what it has delivered for the community and Braemar Community Limited continues to think creatively and practically about what it can do to strengthen and bring resilience to its fragile economy and to create opportunity. Raising the Standard will not only deliver a 5 star visitor attraction, it will also, through the sheer ambition and scope of its plans, contribute to and sustain the long-term viability of Braemar’s growing status as a visitor destination and add to the tourism infrastructure within the region.

A revitalised Castle will strengthen the area’s infrastructure by completing a high-quality tourism corridor from Aberdeen to the Cairngorms and attracting visitors approaching from Perthshire. The result will be to deliver economic value by attracting more visitors from a wider geographical base and benefiting local businesses as well as bringing pleasure, interest and delight to thousands of visitors. Such a shift helps the area’s population too by creating and preserving jobs, supporting businesses and offering new training and volunteering opportunities. And the scope for joint marketing and collaboration with other organisations and attractions will ensure that the new momentum created, for example by the recent re-development of Fife Arms and Braemar Highland Games Centre, will be built upon to ensure long-term sustainability.

As visitors move through the Castle grounds, they engage with not only with history but with the landscape, with woodland and with the kitchen garden. Whether through considering the significance of the Castle’s location (strategically positioned at the meeting point of three mountain passes) or appreciating the rich biodiversity of the area while exploring the woodland trail, Raising the Standard will make the most of the capacity of the Castle to encourage new understanding of the natural world and the sense of well-being that comes from doing so.

The Castle’s kitchen garden appears on maps going back 120 years and plans to re-instate are part of a therapeutic horticulture programme that will be part of the project’s lasting legacy. The garden is a key resource for work with partners Scottish Association for Mental Health and Outdoor Woodland Learning School with whom the team has already worked. And for all, but especially benefiting those whose mobility does not allow them to venture into the Cairngorms, the Viewfinder explains the Castle’s relationship to the surrounding landscape and significant sites such as Kindrochit Castle and the Lecht Old Military Road.