Duff House Mausoleum and the wronged Provost Douglas
Duff House is one of the most impressive buildings in the north-east, even though it was never fully completed. It was intended a symbol, showing the wealth and power of the Duff family. In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, after the partial completion of the mansion, the 2nd Earl Fife had a mausoleum constructed to the south of house. The Earl was determined to show that his family were descended from medieval knights and from the ancient Earls of Fife even though there was no evidence to support either (the Duffs had been bankers in Elgin).
To aid his plan, the Earl ‘acquired’ a number of suitably looking local tombs and memorials which were then shipped off to his knew mausoleum in the Duff House Park. They were ‘repurposed’ with different inscriptions to give credence to the family’s ancestral pretentions.
One tomb he moved had unforeseen consequences. It came from St Mary’s Kirkyard in the heart of Banff itself and so was only moved about a mile. It belong to Alexander Douglas who had been Provost and Sheriff of Banff as well as the Burgh’s Member of Parliament during the time of the War of the Three Kingdoms in the 1640s and 1650s. Douglas was a physician by profession and had been a staunch Covenanter. It is said he brought the General Munro’s Covenanter Army to Banff where it destroyed the Ogilvies mansion (Douglas and George Ogilvie of Dunlugas were always at odds). King Charles is said to have made George Ogilvie the 1st Lord Banff out of sympathy for the destruction of his mansion.
In 1658, during his tenure as Provost, Alexander Douglas erected a tomb for himself in the Kirkyard (although some think he repurposed an older, pre-existing one). The grave was in the traditional form of a recumbent knight. Five years later, his fortunes having taken a turn for the worse after the Restoration of Charles II, Douglas (still the Sheriff) was leaving the Tolbooth one evening when he was stabbed to death by a man selling peat who escaped on a pony up the Strait Path and was never caught.
Douglas was buried in his elaborate tomb and there he remained for over century until Lord Fife appropriated the tomb for his new mausoleum. The spirit of Douglas did not appreciate the move and is said to rise from the Mausoleum; Strange happenings at the Mausoleum at night are often attributed to Provost Douglas: wronged in life, murdered by a man who was never caught and then moved to play a part in someone else’s family story.