Dufftown is steeped in history. Pictish stones almost 2,000 years old form part of the town's long and varied past.
The earliest known inhabitants of the Fiddich valley were Picts. Traces of their occupation remain in the shape of the mysterious 'Elephant Stone' and a weathered Pictish cross almost six feet high.
A Christian community was started in 566 AD when St Moulag founded Mortlach Church, one of the oldest Christian settlements in Scotland.
There is a legend that King Malcolm II extended the church three spears' lengths as a thanksgiving after defeating the Danes on the haugh below the church in 1010. The north wall with its postern door has a leper's squint and in the graveyard is the watch-house used to guard against body-snatchers.
The church still stands on this site today, nestling between Dufftown's oldest distillery, also called Mortlach, and its younger rival, Dufftown.
Mortlach Church
Balvenie Castle was built in the thirteenth century by the Comyn Earls of Buchan and visited by King Edward 1 of England. It was retained by the Stewarts, Earls of Atholl, from 1459 to the seventeenth century. In 1562 Mary Queen of Scots spent two nights at the castle on her northern campaign against the Gordons; it gave refuge to the Marquis of Montrose in 1644 and was stormed by the Royalists in 1649. In 1689, after the Battle of Killiecrankie, victorious Jacobites occupied it. The castle was last occupied by government forces in 1746.
