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Westhall Castle includes a 16th-century L-plan tower house, which was substantially extended in the 17th and 19th century. The estate was held by the Bishops of Aberdeen in the 13th century, and passed to the Gordons during the Reformation. The original L-plan tower was constructed in the 16th century, with a round tower added in the 17th century. In 1681 it was purchased by the Rev James Horne, vicar of Elgin. Further extensions were added around 1838. By the mid-19th century it was the property of Sir James Elphinstone, who invested in both the Aberdeen Canal Company and the Great North of Scotland Railway.
Westhall was later used as an agricultural school, and as a hotel which closed in the 1990s. A period of neglect followed. In 2011 new owners took over the house.
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.