When the mapmaker Timothy Pont saw Baltersan it had just been newly built. He saw it at its best.

Added: 2026-06-07

[00:00:00]Baltersan was described in the late 16th century as being a stately fine house by I believe Timothy Pont, Scotland's greatest cartographer and chorographer.

[00:00:14]Timothy Pont was the son of an Edinburgh minister of the reformed church, the Presbyterian church.

[00:00:22]And he astonishingly traveled Scotland, the length and breadth of Scotland for about 13 years mapping the whole country.

[00:00:32]His maps were never produced during his lifetime, but fortunately for us in 1654, Johannes Blaeu of Amsterdam, the world's leading map producers, created a new Atlas Novus, an atlas of the world. Scotland had over 30 pages in that atlas and with 20,000 place names was the best mapped country in the world.

[00:00:59]Now, Baltersan appears in it, very fortunate, and albeit shown as icons rather than a proper representation of the building, but we know it was a significant building. The particular icon, there was a hierarchy. The more important the castle, the bigger the adornments and the turrets and the flags and so on.

[00:01:21]But Baltersan was very well represented.