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Balmanno Castle is a moated tower house located in Perthshire hamlet of Dron. It was built between 1570 and 1580. It is now modernised and is in good condition. The moat is still partially filled with water. It was built for George Auchinleck, after acquiring the estate.
The celebrated Scots architect Sir Robert Lorimer undertook a major restoration in 1915 for William Millar, a Glasgow ship-owner, as his summer residence. Lorimer's work was of immense quality and undertaken with great care. Externally he added extra wings to form a courtyard. Lorimer allowed himself to dabble in the Gothic, while incorporating internal details from Holyrood Palace whose restoration was the work of Sir William Bruce (1630-1710). Lorimer also furnished the house in every detail, using items he had commissioned as well as commercial pieces purchased around the country. He added a courtyard and expensive furniture to the house. Balmanno was sold after the second world war. Hon. James Michael Edward Bruce CBE and his wife, Jean Coats, lived in this house from the 1950s; their family continue to live in this house.
References:Easter Aquhorthies stone circle, located near Inverurie, is one of the best-preserved examples of a recumbent stone circle, and one of the few that still have their full complement of stones. It consists of a ring of nine stones, eight of which are grey granite and one red jasper. Two more grey granite stones flank a recumbent of red granite flecked with crystals and lines of quartz. The circle is particularly notable for its builders' use of polychromy in the stones, with the reddish ones situated on the SSW side and the grey ones opposite.
The placename Aquhorthies derives from a Scottish Gaelic word meaning 'field of prayer', and may indicate a 'long continuity of sanctity' between the Stone or Bronze Age circle builders and their much later Gaelic successors millennia later. The circle's surroundings were landscaped in the late 19th century, and it sits within a small fenced and walled enclosure. A stone dyke, known as a roundel, was built around the circle some time between 1847 and 1866–7.