Duncan Davidson (1733-99) was a London West India merchant and landowner. There is very little known about his early life, but he bought premises at 14 Fenchurch Buildings, London in 1774 and subsequently went into partnership with his elder brother Henry. He was joint owner of a sugar plantation in Grenada and was mortgagee-in-possession of a rum and sugar plantation in Jamaica. He was also an East India Company stockholder. His brother Henry had purchased Tulloch Castle in 1762 from their maternal grandfather and when Henry died in 1781, Duncan inherited the estate. He married twice, first to Louisa, daughter of Thomas Spencer in 1772, and second to Magdalen, daughter of the merchant William Gemmell, in 1788. He sat as MP for Cromarty in 1790 with the support of William Pulteney (formerly Johnstone) until 1796. He died in 1799.

In 1789, Robert Adam began making designs for a ruinous castle or folly on Tulloch Hill close to the site of Tulloch Castle. Four surviving variant designs are within the Soane collection dating from 1789-90 and there is also a variant within the Victoria and Albert Museum Architectural Drawings Collection. Each design comprises a large drum tower with flanking walls or palisades terminating in smaller square or circular towers and are characteristic of Adam’s picturesque work.

The Adam office drawings SM Adam volume 10/67 and 10/133 might be an alternative design, as suggested by Rowan, albeit embodying a slightly different style similar to a gatehouse. A similar design, but to a larger scale with a zig-zag footprint is SM Adam volume 21/20 which Astley suggests is for Caisteal Gorach. King also suggests that SM Adam volume 21/1 might be a variant, however, this has been catalogued under Osterley House and Park.

The two variants, SM Adam volume 48/105-6, are the closest to what was executed with some differences in the architectural treatment of the central drum tower and shortening of the flanking walls. King suggests that it might have been built to someone else’s design who had already seen Adam’s. In either case, it still stands as a ruin at the top of Tulloch Hill.

The Adam office also designed a rustic cottage for Davidson, but this does not appear to have been executed.

Literature:
A.T. Bolton, The Architecture of Robert and James Adam, Volume II, Index, 1922, pp. 7, 67; A. Rowan, Robert Adam: Catalogue of Architectural Drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1988, pp. 98-99; J. Gifford, The Buildings of Scotland: Highlands and Islands, 1992, p. 408; D. King, The Complete Works of Robert & James Adam and Unbuilt Adam, Volume 1, 2001, p. 426; Volume 2, 2001, pp. 246, 259; S. Astley, Robert Adam’s Castles, 2005, p. 13; D. R. Fisher, ‘DAVIDSON, Duncan (1733-99), of Tulloch, Ross and Myles's, Ongar, Essex’, History of Parliament, online, [accessed 17 May 2024]; UCL, Legacies of British Slavery Database, online, [accessed 17 May 2024]

Louisa Catt, 2024