Eric Grant read geography at Aberdeen University, gained a Ph.D in Historical Geography followed by a master’s course in Archaeology at Cambridge University. Eric has good reason to have a deep interest and knowledge of the Tarradale Estate. He stayed at Tarradale House, on the north bank of the River Beauly many times when it was a University Field Centre, and since 2003 has had the “good fortune” to live there, having spent several years converting it back to a comfortable home.!

This talk will be about the emergence of Tarradale as a landholding from the mists of the middle ages and how Dr Kenneth Murchison bought it and improved it with Indian sourced money. His son, Sir Roderick Murchison, the eminent Victorian geologist and friend of Hugh Miller, sold the estate in the nineteenth century and Tarradale became part of a bigger landholding with the estate mansion, Tarradale House, becoming a separate unit with a fascinating history of its own.!