Tullibody House

A tower house marked Tillibody appeared on John Adair’s 1681 map of Clakmanan Shire.

Tullibody House was a large laird’s mansion that was presumed to have been built by Robert Meldrum in the mid-1600s, on the site of at least two early medieval castles on the Tullibody (Tullebodevin or Dunbodevin) estate in Clackmannanshire. It was demolished during the early 1960s.

Robert Meldrum purchased the Tullibody property from the Crown in early 1648, following the bankruptcy and death of its recent owner, Sir William Alexander, the first Earl of Stirling. Meldrum was appointed one of two commissioners and the Member of Parliament for Clackmannanshire later in 1648 and either built or substantially renovated Tullibody House in the 1650s. John Ramsay of Ochtertyre wrote that ‘The old house of Tullibody was built a few years before the Restoration by Mr Robert Meldryum. In point of shape it resembled the old house of Newton, being only larger. Abercromby remembers it before his father demolished it to building the present house, which he set down in a corn ridge’.

When Robert Meldrum died in 1662, Tullibody House transferred to his brother, Major George Meldrum, who was described as ‘Laird of Tillibody’ when he died in 1676. By 1677, the property was owned by Sir William Sharp of Staneyhill, then by a series of owners named Abercromby. Alexander Abercromby, the MP for Clackmannanshire between 1703 and 1707, demolished and rebuilt Tullibody House around 1710 and landscaped the property with formal gardens and fir plantations.

Old Newton of Doune, said to have inspired the architecture of Robert Meldrum’s Tullibody House.

Hand-tinted vintage photograph of a Tullibody House that was later built by Alexander Abercromby (Canmore).

References

—Author visit to former Tullibody estate, May 2022.

—’Tullibody Castle‘, Stravaging around Scotland website.