A surprisingly sizeable but rather plain hunting lodge at the centre of the Glenavon Estate in the uplands of Moray, Inchrory lies in a very remote corner of the Grampian Mountains, on the right bank of the River Avon, a quarter-mile (0.4 km) north of its junction with the Builg Burn. The main building is L-shaped and comprises two storeys and an attic, constructed in rubble masonry with a slated roof. There is a separate substantial range of outbuildings to the rear, and a walled garden and a tennis court nearby. The lodge dates from 1847 and was the property of Lord Bentinck. However, 100 years earlier this was the site of a military camp designed to prevent Jacobites and cattle smugglers using Glen Avon as a routeway over the hills. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visited on horseback while journeying from Tomintoul to Loch Builg on an outing from Balmoral Castle on 5th Sept 1860. Victoria records in her diary seeing "two eagles towering splendidly above" as the couple approached. Dating from the same year, a watercolour of the area by George Arthur Fripp (1813-96) is in the Royal Collection.
More recently the lodge and 16,592-ha / 41,000-acre estate were the property of the Wills family, of Imperial Tobacco, but were sold by Sir David Seton Wills in 1995 to a Malaysian company.
The area around Inchrory forms a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) owing to the occurrence of limestone, rare in the Cairngorms, and the associated plant and insect species. There is also evidence of a glacially-breached watershed here, where the ancient route of the River Avon to the east, into the valley of the River Don, was diverted north.
