New Town

Grantown started life as a New Town, built on a piece of uninhabited moorland one and a half miles from Castle Grant.  The centre of the town was a rectangular piece of grass and round this the first houses were built.  If you stand at the Town House looking towards the town, look to your left and you are looking at Grantowns oldest houses. They were built in 1768 by James Haston son of Sir Ludovick head gardener at the castle, before he emgrated to North America in the 1780's.  The houses were magnificent in comparison to the turf house that he himself was born in.  The first house built was on the north side of the square the first stone laid was on the 26th June 1765.  It was the home of John Grant  a weaver from Rhothiemurchus.  Sadly this house was demolished in the early 1800's, to be replaced by the National Bank Building now called Morlich House, next to that is the Cairngorm National Park building block built in 1884.  The buiding dominating the square is now known as the Town House it was built in 1868 as a Court House.  During the local government reorganisation in the 1890's the name Grantown-on-Spey was adopted.