The old castle of Cromartie has now long disappeared, the stones of which it was built having been used for the erection of a modern house in 1772, after the estate had passed, by purchase, from the family of Urquhart to Mr George Ross. It was a building of considerable antiquity. In 1470 a royal grant was made by James III. to William Urquhart of the Motehill, or Mount of Cromartie, with permission to erect on this a tower or fortalice. Advantage was taken of this permission to fortify the family mansion, and it was converted into a castle of considerable strength.[26] Sir Thomas says of it: "The stance thereof is stately, and the house it selfe of a notable good fabrick and contrivance."[27] An interesting description of the building as it was just before its demolition is given by Hugh Miller. "Directly behind the site of the old town," he says, "the ground rises abruptly from the level to the height of nearly a hundred feet, after which it forms a kind of table-land of considerable extent, and then sweeps gently to the top of the hill. A deep ravine, with a little stream running through it, intersects the rising ground at nearly right angles with the front which it presents to the houses; and on the eastern angle, towering over the ravine on the one side, and the edge of the bank on the other, stood the old castle of Cromarty. It was a massy, time-worn building, rising in some places to the height of six storeys, battlemented at the top, and roofed with grey stone. One immense turret jutted out from the corner, which occupied the extreme point of the angle, and looking down from an altitude of at least one hundred and sixty feet on the little stream, and the struggling row of trees which sprung up at its edge, commanded both sides of the declivity and the town below." Of the interior we are told by the same writer, on the authority of an old woman who, as a child, had lived in the castle, that "two threshers could have plied their flails within the huge chimney of the kitchen; and that, in the great hall, an immense, dark chamber, lined with oak, a party of a hundred men had exercised at the pike."[28] The elder Sir Thomas had also a winter residence in Banff.[29] In the Court-book of the Burgh of Banff we have the following entry: "1630, July 21st, Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromartie gave in ane Act of the Session of Banff, geiveing licence to him to erect ane desk and loft in the kirk of Banff (seeing he is both a parochiner and resident within the said toun) for his accomodatione. The brethren gave their approbatione with express provision that neither the edifice nor lichtes of the said kirk suld be deteriorat."[30]