Brough House

It may have puzzled blog readers than an account of  Brough House, which was the ultimate destination of the odyssey to Orkney, was missing from the Orkney travelogue. In fact, there was a bit of a delay in obtaining permission to use photographs of the building so I avoided writing about the building too.

So now, belatedly, I can continue in both sound and vision. :-)

Brough House is a late 18th Century laird's house on Westray, one of the outer Orkney islands. Brough was restored by Mark Fresson from a state of semi-ruination. The works took 3 years and were completed in 2011. 

Brough House at night

The image of  Brough, above, is a scan of Mark's 2021 Christmas card. Most buildings on Orkney are a single storey, due to the wind which whips over the island.  So, a three story building like Brough makes an incredibly audacious statement.  Mark says the building emits terrible noises in the wind. The construction is stone around a clay core, which is designed to flex in the wind.

Like many Georgian houses, Brough is just one room deep. The motivation is to impress visitors by the scale of the exterior. This certainly worked for Katherine and myself. :-)

Most of the building has been furnished beautifully as it would have been 200 years ago. And if I can achieve at Balintore even a fraction of what Mark has managed at Brough, then I will be a happy man. The historic ground floor dining room and the salon above are particular triumphs of period style.

the first floor salon

For the 17 dinner party guests, the large dining table was fully extended and moved to a different, slightly more contemporary, space shown below. How Mark obtained 17 sets of perfectly matching antique cutlery, crockery and wine glasses for each of the 8 courses, I will never know.

I was particularly envious of  the beautiful dark stone floors, which come from Orkney itself. Mark advised the stone could be picked up locally very cheaply - if only I had brought an empty lorry!

the dining table - set for 17!

The evening went with a swing as I have previously documented in the blog. I slept overnight in the loft-space, up the spiral staircase shown. This part of the house is contemporary in style and quite self contained - even equipped with a drawing studio for  Mark. 

So despite being a historic and listed building, Brough is set-up for comfortable and stylish 21st century living and working. This is an important lesson for us all.