Stories of Re-emergence
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According to stories, another furious sand-storm in the late eighteenth century exposed the greater part of the mansion house. Local cottagers of the neighbourhood immediately seized upon it, and carried its stones to build their dwellings. Then came another storm, and again it disappeared beneath the sand.
Also in the eighteenth century, it is said that one of its chimneys was seen rising above the sand. One man, more courageous than the rest, mounted to the top of the sand hill and called down through the open chimney. His call was answered by a ghostly voice. The man turned and fled. Shortly afterwards, the winds blew once more and the chimney disappeared during a night of blinding drift. Since then there has been no further reappearance of the house and these ghostly visitors to our world have disappeared back into the sands. |
Chimney tops were seen ‘peering like a huge march-stone above the sand, only to vanish again with the next storm’. About 1920, sand stone blocks bearing part of the family coat of arms were found, and during the 1930s a complete outline of foundation stones was exposed a short distance north-west of Kincorth. Anderson (1938) said ‘there is little doubt as to their being the foundations of the mansion house. The proximity of large kitchen middens and a circular mound, which is probably the doocot plus the size of the house all point to this’. Alas, the precise location was not recorded.
The Fruits of the sand
It is said that traces of the once-fruitful orchard have occasionally been seen. Many years after the estate had been destroyed the branches of a cherry-tree in full blossom were seen protruding from the side of one of the sand hills under which the orchard lay buried. An old man, who died in the nineteenth century at the age of eighty, used to relate that in his younger days he had seen an apple-tree appearing above the waste. Once it budded and blossomed and finally bore fruit. They were said to be of fair size and particularly delicious flavour.
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