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Cullen House is a large house, now divided into fourteen separate dwellings, about 1 kilometre south west of the coastal town of Cullen in Moray. Originally built between 1600 and 1602, incorporating some of the fabric of a medieval building on the site, it was the seat of the Ogilvies of Findlater, who went on to become the Earls of Findlater and Seafield, and remained in their family until 1982. The house has been extended and remodelled several times since 1602, by prominent architects such as William Adam, his sons James and John Adam, and David Bryce. It has been described by the architectural historian Charles McKean as 'one of the grandest houses in Scotland'.
The house sits in an expansive estate, enlarged in the 1820s when the entire village of Cullen, save for Cullen Old Church, was demolished to make way for improvements to the grounds by Lewis Grant-Ogilvy, 5th Earl of Seafield. A new village, closer to the coast, was constructed for the inhabitants.
Cullen House was designated a Category A listed building in 1972, by which time it had fallen into a state of disrepair. Its contents were sold in 1975, and in 1982 it was purchased by Kit Martin, a specialist in saving historic buildings, who worked with the local architect Douglas Forrest to convert it into fourteen individual dwellings, while retaining much of the original interior of the building. The house was badly damaged by fire in 1987, and underwent an extensive programme of restoration that lasted until 1989.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.