Situated on Royal Deeside, 5 miles (8 km) west of Braemar in Aberdeenshire, Mar Lodge was built by the Duke of Fife in 1895 and designed to look like a German hunting lodge. Along with the surrounding estate, it was purchased by the National Trust for Scotland in 1995.
The original Mar Lodge was built in the late 18th Century on part of the lands forfeited by John Erskine, the 11th Earl of Mar (1675 - 1732), following his support for the Jacobite rebellion of 1715. The Earls of Fife fell heir to the estate and needed a base for their hunting. This first lodge was badly damaged by flooding, the 'Muckle Spate' of 1829 and later demolished.
New Mar Lodge, also known as Corriemulzie Cottage, was built on higher ground in the mid-19th Century and became the home of James Duff, 5th Earl of Fife (1814 - 1879). His son, Alexander Duff, the 1st Duke of Fife (1849 - 1912) married Princess Louise, daughter of the future King Edward VII and thus, when Corriemulzie was damaged by fire in 1895, the Aberdeen architect A. Marshall Mackenzie was asked to produce a grander version of the same. The lodge makes extensive use of wood panelling, and is replete with dead animals. On either side of the building stand an Episcopalian chapel and, perhaps its most striking feature, a ballroom decorated with several thousand sets of deer antlers.
In the 20th Century the Fifes disposed of the lodge. In 1991, during a restoration a fire badly damaged the core of the house, although the contents were in storage and thus undamaged. The lodge and Mar estate now have a new future focused on conservation thanks to the Lottery Commission-funded purchase by the National Trust for Scotland.
Mar Lodge is approached over Victoria Bridge, a lattice girder structure built across the River Dee in 1905.
