ABOUT FORTINGALL

 

Standing next to the hotel is The Fortingall Yew which many believe to be the oldest tree in the world - Modern estimates place its age at 5,000 years. This sacred tree has been drawing visitors to the glen since long before recorded history.

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The area is steeped in legend. It is said that Pontius Pilate, best remembered as the judge at the trial of Jesus Christ in AD33, was born in Fortingall. A story that caught international attention when The New York Times published a feature on the tale in 1899. They say Ceasar Augustus dispatched envoys to establish diplomatic relations with prominent British and Caledonian chieftains. According to legend, one of the Roman envoys fathered a child with a local Caledonian woman, and this child was later taken back to Rome and raised as Pontius Pilate.

 

Fortingall is also home to a variety of prehistoric archaeological sites including Càrn na Marbh, a Bronze Age burial mound and an Iron Age cult centre, which may have had the Fortingall Yew as its focus. Fortingall became an important Christian Centre the Early Middle Ages, with the yew already full grown, perhaps because it was already a sacred place.

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HISTORY OF THE FORTINGALL

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The Fortingall was the vision of shipping magnate, politician and philanthropist, Sir Donald Currie, who bought the village in 1885 and commissioned the celebrated Arts & Crafts architect James Maclaren, to design the hotel, which has been described by architectural historians as “One of the great treasures of British Victorian rural architecture", as well as "One of the most important examples of Arts and Crafts architecture in Scotland".

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