Drum Castle, a mansion in Drumoak parish, Aberdeenshire, 1 mile NW of Drum station on the Deeside railway, this being 10 miles WSW of Aberdeen. The house itself is a large Elizabethan edifice, built in 1619, and adjoins a three-story, massive granite keep, the Tower of Drum, which, dating from the 12th or 13th century, measures 60 by 40 feet, and is 63 feet high, with walls 12 feet in thickness. This was the royal fortalice conferred, with the Forest of Drum, in 1323, by Robert Bruce, on his armour-bearer, Sir William de Irvine, whose grandson, Sir Alexander, commanded and fell at Harlaw (1411), whilst his thirteenth descendant, also a Sir Alexander (d. 1687), has been identified with the ` Laird o' Drum' of a good old ballad. The present and twenty-first laird, Alexander Forbes Irvine, Esq. (b. 1818; suc. 1861), holds 7689 acres in the shire, valued at £5210 per annum. The Hill of Drum, extending west-south-westward from the mansion, rises grad nally, on all sides, from gently undulated low ground to an elevation of 414 feet above sea-level, and from its SE shoulder commands an extensive view. At its south-western base, 1½ mile W of Park station, lies the shallow, weedy Loch of Drum (6 x 21/3 furl.; 225 feet), which, receiving a streamlet from Banchory-Ternan, sends off its effluence southward to the Dee.—Ord. Sur., shs. 76,66,1874-71.
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