The Many Lives of Duff House
Duff House
(From an engraving by Neale & Moule, 1822)
Professor Kevin James, the Scottish Studies Foundation Chair at the University of Guelph, in partnership with The Big Light production company, based in Glasgow, has created a podcast, "The Many Lives of Duff House," exploring the extraordinary life and after-life of an 18th-century aristocratic home, Duff House, near Banff in Aberdeenshire. Consider it a "Downton Abbey" of North-East Scotland!
The podcast (links below) takes listeners on a journey through the storied past of this magnificent Georgian mansion, exploring its grand ambitions, bitter disputes, and unexpected roles through the centuries.
Duff House was originally conceived as a lavish statement of power and wealth by William Duff, the 1st Earl Fife, a prosperous 18th-century businessman and politician. He hired celebrated architect William Adam to design a baroque masterpiece that would serve as the seat of his earldom and cement his family's power in the area. The project, however, was doomed from the start. A lack of a clear contract and spiralling costs led to a bitter and prolonged legal battle between client and architect.
The feud was so acrimonious that Duff, despite the house's eventual completion, never slept a single night within its walls.
The podcast explores this dramatic origin story and traces the house's extraordinary transformations.
Kevin said: "From its construction and the litigation that surrounded it, Duff House has always been a unique place — all the more so when we you add the many fascinating layers of its twentieth-century lives."
Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Professor James, who holds the Scottish Studies Foundation Chair at the University of Guelph in Canada, was tasked with looking into the weird and wonderful uses of the house during the 20th Century.
In 1906, the Duff family, by then married into royalty, no longer required the estate and gifted it to the twin burghs of Banff and Macduff. This marked the beginning of a new chapter, as the house shed its identity as a private residence and took on a series of remarkably different roles. It was, at various times, a hotel, a sanatorium for the "scientific treatment of disorders of nutrition," and a hotel again.
Rosemary Willis, Duff House Steward and Guide, talked about the feeling in the town when the Duke decided to leave: "It must have felt like a real loss because the Duffs had been living along this coast since the 1300s. They'd had grants of land from Robert the Bruce and had been actively involved as MPs for Elgin and for Banff for hundreds of years."
Its most dramatic incarnation came during the Second World War. Duff House was requisitioned for military use, serving as an internment camp, a prisoner-of-war camp, and a headquarters for Allied regiments. The podcast recounts the shocking story of a German bombing raid in 1940 that killed German prisoners and guards, and details the house's later use by Norwegian and Polish soldiers, whose presence is still evidenced by markings left on the walls.
Ian Williams, Chairperson of the Friends of Duff House said: "If the Nazis were going to invade, this was the most likely place they would come. Be it from Norway or from the continent, so there had to be soldiers headquartered here at Duff House!"
After falling into disrepair following the war, Duff House was eventually taken into state care and underwent extensive restoration to bring it back to its former glory. Today, it stands as a country house gallery and part of the National Galleries of Scotland run as part of an agreement between the Galleries, Aberdeenshire Council and Historic Environment Scotland. This stunning landmark continues to attract visitors from around the world, and the podcast looks ahead to what the future might bring for Duff House.
You can listen to the podcast here:
It is also available on YouTube here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEmm3wiGdgU
Dr. Kevin James (R) Gavin Hughes (L) at Duff House
University of Guelph recent graduate, Gavin Hughes (MA '24), was the lead student researcher working with Dr. Kevin James on the Duff House project in partnership with Historic Environment Scotland. The partnership demonstrates the central role students like Gavin play in the Centre for Scottish Studies, and the wide impact of their research.
