Lumphanan Peel Ring

The following site is worth a visit as you travel along Deeside, it is a Scheduled Ancient Monuments.  The site is managed by Historic Scotland, access is free but the site is unmanned.  

 This great earthwork of the 13th-century was the site of a fortified residence, possibly a hunting lodge of the Durward family.  On 21 July 1296, during his advance northward into Moray, Edward I of England made a detour to Lumphanan to receive the submission of Sir John de Melville, lord of Raith, in Fife.   The castle seems to have been abandoned shortly after this time. The mound was briefly reoccupied in the 1480s when Thomas Charteris, of Kinfauns in Perthshire, built a modest two-storey residence on the summit. This was known as Ha’ton House, and now stands as foundations only.