The Bridge of Terror

This summer, friend of Balintore, Karel memorably named a section of an upper floor corridor "The Bridge of Terror". The floor here is temporary and was built from sterling board on top of lightweight wooden beams. It gives access to a number of rooms in the castle that were previously inaccessible, and so has been incredibly useful. The terror comes from the holes in the sterling board, which allow the tops of scaffolding poles to stick through, so the large drop into the Great Hall below is all too visible.

Visitors are spooked by the sterling board (i.e. will it take their weight?), the visible scaffolding poles (i.e. am I on scaffolding?), and of course the visible drop. The irony is that the temporary flooring is incredibly strong, resting on very solid wooden beams fixed into the building rather than resting on scaffolding, and the holes are only 6" x 6" - far to small to drop through. "Terror" is often all in the mind.

The current phase of work is sealing-up the Great Hall: not only ensuring people don't drop into it but a precursor to the restoration proper of this vast space. This entails installing new beams, floor joists and flooring into the rooms above the Great Hall.

In fact, the Bridge of Terror after 7 or so years of existence, is now no more so I took the before and after photographs recently for this blog article to form an in memoriam.

In fact the "during" picture of the Bridge of Terror is, in my opinion, even more terrifying as although we now have heavyweight floor joists in position, and some insulation, the flooring has still to be completed as finally shown in the "after" picture. The scaffolding is still there in the Great Hall underneath the floor now, providing a platform for Gregor and Glen to work from underneath in safely.

the bridge of terror (before)

the bridge of terror is no more (during)

the bridge of terror is no more (after)

The first of the two bedrooms (RA5 in the 2007 attic floor plans) which requires a total floor rebuild is shown here. You can see in the "before" that the remaining bits of flooring and remaining beams have been totally destroyed by dry rot. In the "during" you can see the new floor joists in position. Netting has been installed to hold underfloor insulation. In the "after" you can see that the flooring has been laid.

The netting has confused the resident pigeon "Flappy" who has been used to just flying through this floor without hinderance. Yesterday evening, Flappy was caught up in the netting, but found a way out easily enough.

bedroom RA5 (before)

bedroom RA5 (during)

bedroom RA5 (after)

The second of the two bedrooms (RA4 in the 2007 attic floor plans) which requires a total floor rebuild is shown here. You can see in the "before" that there is little there at all - just some lightweight temporary beams on the bottom left. In the "during" you can see the new floor joists and some new flooring. In fact, it's almost hard to appreciate that this is one and the same space. In the "after" the flooring has been completed.

bedroom RA4 (before)

bedroom RA4 (during)

bedroom RA4 (after)

The completed flooring on the Bridge of Terror, RA4 and RA5 results in a major claim of territory, even if not quite the "Alaska Purchase". :-) Of late, I have been thinking about what really satisfies me the most about restoration, and it is exactly this - the reclaiming of space where there was nothing there beforehand. I have been quite envious of Gregor's and Glen's endeavours. The worst part is that I am paying them to do what I would most enjoy myself. However, in such a large restoration exigencies of timescale dominate. 

The Return of the Wild Raspberries

For me, one of most moving parts in Archie Montgomery's reminiscence about staying with his grandmother, Lady Langman, at Balintore Castle was his reference to picking the wild raspberries along the drive. Since then many things changed: Lady Langman died in 1963 and the castle fell into dereliction. 

However, the wild raspberries are still here. With the transience of life, we cling on to the eternal or seemingly eternal. Great solace and joy is to be had from the stars, familiar landscapes and in this instance, the wild raspberries.

wild raspberries at Balintore this year

This year has been a bumper one for raspberries, and as I walked past the bushes yesterday, I reminisced about my own acquaintance with Archie Montgomery, as he himself passed away on the 17th July this year. It goes without saying that I cherished this connection with Balintore's past, and his death totally took me by surprise.     

Archie is the chap who commissioned this fantastic drone panorama of the landscape around Balintore Castle as part of creating a diorama in the snooker room of North Cadbury Court in Somerset, which houses the original billiard table from Balintore Castle. So in a sense the snooker table is now back at Balintore, albeit a virtual recreation courtesy of digital technology.

high resolution Balintore panorama (courtesy of Andrew Holt)

Balintore Castle on the snooker room wall

the Balintore landscape on the snooker room wall

This year, I spotted some of the raspberries had a golden hue. Googling reveals that yellow raspberries do occur in nature (a recessive gene) but Darwin found they did not survive longer term as the birds don't like them! Naturally, I sampled and my palate found the taste of the yellow to be superior - I had been expecting an identical flavour. 

wild golden raspberries at Balintore this year

in memory of
Archie Montgomery 
13th August 1957 - 17th July 2021

My Darling Boy

On his last visit, friend of Balintore, Duncan, generously gifted me a book entitled "Miss Savidge Moves Her House" about a misguided but well-intentioned restoration. Was he trying to tell me something? :-)

"There is another little gift in the book for you.", he confided. Between the pages was a old letter dating from 1913, written to an H.R.H. Kennard at Eton College by his mother. I love old letters, so bravely set about deciphering the idiosyncratic copperplate. Isn't it odd, that handwriting is such a non-deterministic medium? The contrast is stark against modern digital communication, where we no longer puzzle about what is written, but puzzle instead about the state of mind of the author.

the envelope

As I was working out the contents, my eyes ran over the printed letter head "Balintore Castle.N.B." and a huge smile crossed my face and interrupted play. How had Duncan got hold of this? How marvellous to have in my hands an historical letter written inside this very building!

"N.B." in this context means Scotland (i.e. North Briton). This was often used for addressing postal communication in the 19th Century, but was archaic by the early 20th Century.

My transcription of the text of the letter is appended with informative hyperlinks. There were two spelling errors which I have highlighted in red. The use of the term "Remove" indicates that the darling boy was in a particular year at Eton, and would have been around 15 years old. This is less a letter from a mother than an edict from the British Empire instilling the need to work hard, but more importantly steadily, and for God and natural leadership to run their course. Swedish Drill is some kind of "physical jerks" of the day that were sensibly left behind on the playing fields of Eton. Summer Fields is a private school in Oxford, so darling boy frequented the Oxford/Windsor area.

In 1921 Lieutenant H.R.H. Kennard appears in the London Gazette. The combination of initials is surely rare enough for a confident identification outside of royal circles. He would be around 23, and presumably would have seen some action in the officer classes during WWI.

The shooting tenant at Balintore in 1913 was J.G. Peel Esquire. So the Kennard family were presumably good friends of his. The author of the letter is moving on to Glendaruel. This is most likely to be Glendaruel House (ravaged by fire in 1970) as this also had shooting. There is a small chance it was the nearby Dunans Castle (ravaged by fire in 2001) which is well known in restoration circles.

pages 1 and 4 of the letter

pages 2 and 3 of the letter

Many thanks to friend of Balintore, Katherine, for identifying darling boy as the gloriously fecund Henry Rowland Heyworth Kennard, and for identifying the writer of the letter as the formidable Winifred Dagmar Kennard (nee Heyworth).

genealogy and identification of darling boy

Transcription of Letter

H.R.H. Kennard Esquire

Wootton(sp?) House

Eton College

Windsor

TELEGRAMS,

LINTHATHEN(sp?) ,4 ½ MILES

Balintore Castle

Kirriemuir.N.B.

Oct 4th

1913

My darling Boy,

We are leaving here today 

& going on to Glendaruel, 

thank you very much for

your interesting letters, I am 

glad you find you can cope 

with Remove work, the thing

is, to work on steadily & 

un-ostentatiously & so quietly 

leave the slackers behind, they

are boys who have no 

doubt great difficulty,

owing to idleness, or want of 

capacity, in reaching even 

as far as Remove. You 

are working with the object 

of waking the best of the 

intelligence that God has 

given you & so becoming 

a leader & not merely one 

of the following flock of sheep. 

Good work will always tell in 

the end and as I always reminded 

you at Summer Fields, you 

are now reaping a few of 

the results of a steady time 

there which is making things 

easier where you are, so too in 

the world, if you work on 

steadily nothing will be 

beyond your power when 

you really want to attain it. 

The Swedish drill sounds rather 

fun, I saw lots of Norwegian 

soldiers doing it, some years 

ago & they looked so funny! 

Have you started “footer” yet or 

perhaps you have some strange 

name for it? Daphne is here 

having a long holiday but two

of the boys have long since re-

turned to school. Send me the 

school list as soon as you can. 

Much love my darling from Father 

& your ever loving mother.

Kilberry Castle

What is there to say about Kilberry Castle? Well, it is a building miraculously frozen in the Victorian era. The castle has essentially not been altered or redecorated since then. Though in need of much work, it is an increasingly rare survivor from the 19th Century, so much so, that if it were located anywhere else than in a remote location half-way down the Mull of Kintyre, it could be opened as a museum.

The building dates from the 15th Century, with major additions by David Bryce in the 19th Century. David Bryce was a pupil of William Burn, who designed Balintore Castle. Kilberry has been in the ownership of the Campbell family right up to the present day for nigh on 500 years.

It seems to be the case that the survival of the interior during the turbulence of the 20th Century is down to the remarkable Marion Campbell, an archaeologist and antiquarian who clearly recognised the value of the surviving fabric. Throughout the building there are collections of ethnographic and Wunderkammer curiosities, and these betray, to my eye, the hand of Marion.

When the building appeared on the market, it was quite so special that my friends and I immediately planned a trip to view it. My friends are genuinely interested in purchasing a historic building in the Scottish countryside, so Kilberry pressed their buttons.  I came along putatively as someone with experience of restoration, though in all honesty my button was pressed too. :-)

The trip was cancelled due to other engagements, but then it unexpectedly went live again and we set off with just a few days notice behind us. The plan was to "wild camp" nearby for the night before the viewing, given the long journey involved. My friends had packed a Dutch Army marquee that was perhaps 20' x 20' and up-market camping beds that raised us off the ground for sleeping, so it was a luxurious experience - far removed from any of my previous experiences in a tent.

We had a barbeque by a white sandy beach, and as it got dark we created a fire pit on the beach itself, told tales and, err, consumed a little alcohol. We had talked about some wild-swimming, but I knew I would be mortified to do this in front of anyone else, so the next morning I rose earlier than everyone else, walked through a forest to a very private beach with shelved white sand that we had discovered the day before. I managed to get my torso under the water - which is more than I had managed to do at the Scottish seaside as a child. I bravely swam a few strokes and I find myself surprised to be writing this, but the water was not cold after the first shock. What stopped me swimming further was the embarrassment (I was in my underpants) and the fact I had sneaked off without telling my friends so they might have been worried about me. The trip through the forest to get to this secluded section of beach on foot had been a good 30 minutes.

When I returned to camp, I hung my underpants on the guy rope of the tent to dry. I felt very proud of myself, having overcome that fear barrier of swimming in the sea in Scotland which had hung over me my entire life.

The estate agent Jo met us at Kilberry and showed us around for 45 minutes. We we all fully masked throughout. Then Jo said we could have 45 minutes in the castle on our own until her next viewers came at 2 PM. You could tell she knew we had been waiting for this moment with great pleasure. Masks were flung off, and we zoomed about the building like excited school children. I am a hesitant photographer, but took about 200 photos in the next 45 minutes without really thinking about it, as I knew this was potentially a "last chance to view".

So Kilberry is special, really special, and everyone in our party felt the same. We were all worried that the building might fall into the hands of an unsympathetic purchaser. Things should be left, modulo some building maintenance, exactly as they are. Anything else would be an architectural crime.

The visit helped to put Balintore into context. Both Kilberry and Balintore are in the baronial style, both are rather the worse for wear, and both are a Victorian time capsule. Balintore is larger (20,000 square feet c.f. 13,000 square feet), but is in a far worse condition. Given the free choice between Balintore and Kilberry, I would choose Kilberry due to its deep history, 22 acres of grounds and its peerless position by a white sand beach. However, given the purchase cost of Kilberry (overs over £650k); the restoration cost (at least £1m) and given the impracticality of bringing in building materials due to its extremely remote location, Balintore was starting to look, dare I say it, much more practical.

What particularly struck me at Kilberry was the power of taxidermy to transform an interior. There were many impressive pieces, mostly from India, and it would be a crime if these specimens were ever removed from the building. I have been collecting a few items for Balintore, and the Kilberry experience confirmed this was the right thing to do.

My friends similarly decided that Kilberry was impractical for them, but each came to me individually during the trip to say how much they loved the building and really wanted to take it on. For all of us, the trip had been a little bit of magic: camping in a warm and sunny Scottish summer, relishing the rush of an early post-lockdown trip, and enjoying the historic atmosphere that imbued the castle.

The following selection of my photographs speak for themselves:

Courtyard Troughs II

This is a follow-on post from the earlier entry on the courtyard troughs that we planted-up for the 10th July open day.

The open day has come and gone, so I had a chance to re-photograph the troughs today as they are, I reckon, at their flowering peak.

Just as the plants in the troughs have gown so have the weeds in the carefully weeded courtyard, for which I must apologise. Friend of Balintore, Simon, wanted to re-weed the courtyard on the evening of the open day - but we were so against the wall with other more essential tasks - that I forbade it.

Simon told me I looked as though I had the troubles on the world on my shoulders during the open day. :-) No truer words were spoken. My builders had been called off the job unexpectedly 4 days before the open day, so at 1:30 AM on the morning of the open day, I was still filling, sanding and painting the Servants' Hall.

Unexpected last minute withdrawals, meant I was trying to print out copies of the event's handout at 6 AM, just as my printer was beginning to fail; running out of toner and running out of paper. 

At 11 PM before the open day, I was putting chalk arrows and numbers on the floors for a self-guided tour round the building. Friends had come up with the genius idea of using chalk and then bought some chalk supplies the evening before. This did save a lot of effort compared to signs - as it was easy to add in extra marks for clarity rather than print another sign.

As "freedom day" (from most covid restrictions) was rescheduled from before the open day to after the open day, extra work was involved to ensure we followed covid protocols. And although we did have contingency planning for this, the sheer amount of hard work involved took its toll. In the end the 10 volunteers did a brilliant job to achieve covid compliance and the standard reached was exceptionally high.  

Coupled to an un-expected, but gratifying, high turnout which caused parking issues - the stress levels were running high on the day. Volunteers bravely jumped onboard to help marshal the situation. In the afternoon the crowds thinned out somewhat, and things settled down so I was finally able to enjoy chatting to guests. 

One might ask "Why do I put myself through this?". :-) Well, with a A-listed building like Balintore, bought with a compulsory purchase enshrined in law, there is a need to be publicly accountable and to show the ongoing restoration in progress. Also, having an open day forces a number of things: getting phases of the restoration completed (or almost completed) for public presentation, and focusses the mind wonderfully on what the next phases might be - not just in terms of the restoration but in terms of how things may operate. For example, post open day we are currently considering a much higher level of community involvement. 

And of course, without the open day we would not have, friend of Balintore, Karel's wonderfully planted up troughs. :-)

the cool colour trough

the warm colour trough

Top Floor Cushions Covers

Thanks to friend of Balintore, Violet,  for sewing cushion covers for the window seats that Gregor built on the top floor of Balintore Castle.

The colour of the paint in the "purple room" is called "Highland Thistle". I am afraid the name did sway me, because it felt so appropriate for Balintore. Accordingly, Violet covered the cushion in a thistle print out of her rag bag, and picked up the wall colour by covering the buttons in a purple velvet. The pitch pine lining in the window seat is from Lochee Parish Church in Dundee, and the patina is so great, I could not bring myself to paint over it.

seat cushion in purple room

I told Violet I was going to go for a mid-green paint for the "green room". However, by the time Violet chose a green fabric from her rag bag, I still had not nailed the paint colour. I finally chose "Greenhill" from B&Q as it was on special offer. When Violet's cushion arrived, I was astonished how closely the colour of the fabric and the paint matched. Kismet!

seat cushion in green room

For the "red room" I supplied Violet with a forgiving damask, that would blend with anything warm. Again, the paint colour was chosen afterwards, and thankfully there was no glaring clash. Note how Violet has carefully centred the pattern.

seat cushion in red room

Violet did this amazing work for free! I gave Violet some Python programming hints for her Data Science college course homework in return. However, this doesn't count as it was such fun! 

It goes without saying, that I am delighted with the cushions and the clear attention to detail which in my view lifts the atmosphere of the rooms.

Buttercup Meadow

 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/vGhtQ5qt2xeJUGXS7