Dalhousie Park, Edzell

Dundee 29 miles
Aberdeen 40 miles
Brechin 6 miles
Forfar 15 miles
Kirriemuir 17 miles

About the town of Edzell

The attractive village of Edzell lies about six miles north of Brechin and the A90 Dundee to Aberdeen dual carriageway. A mile to its west is Edzell Castle, perhaps better known than the village itself.

And Edzell Castle is certainly older than the village, which in its current form and name dates back only to 1839. That was the year in which the local laird, the Earl of Panmure, greatly expanded the existing settlement of Slateford. What emerged was Edzell, complete with its broad main street and generous open spaces.

Edzell is a village that has seen much change over its short history. A good example is the way that the village was connected to the railway very late, in 1896. The passenger service had already been lost by 1931, and even the freight line shut in 1966. Edzell must be one of the few settlements to have lost its passenger railway even before it gained its mains electricity, which only arrived in 1936.

Land a little to the east of the village was used for an RAF airfield during World War II, and in the 1960s this became a major US Navy base used to track submarines around the world. With the end of the Cold War and the advance of technology this too was eventually overtaken, and the military base at Edzell closed in 1995.