Castles Home and Away: Part One

A few weeks back, Andrew and I went on a two day road trip to the West Highlands to catch one of the rare open days at Castle Stalker. This is the iconic castle on an island in a loch which features in the "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" film and on shortbread tins with a frequency second only to Eilean Donan Castle. 

Castle Stalker was restored in the 1960's/1970's with everything having to be brought over by boat, so seeing the end result was a planned morale booster for endeavours at Balintore Castle. The rule of the road trip was that we could spontaneously follow up on any brown sign (i.e. place of interest) that we saw en route.

As we were driving along Loch Awe, a building suddenly appeared on the left-hand side that I knew only from photographs. "Let's stop here!" I cried. I had no idea that the quirkily glorious St. Conan's Kirk was in the vicinity. The visit was a wish that was inadvertently granted.

rear panorama

Andrew did not like St. Conan's Kirk. It is an architectural mish-mash of styles, with everything from Celtic, through Norman to Gothic - even some Moderne. We tried hard to pin-point the date - some elements seemed Victorian but others looked 1920's. In the end we were completely flummoxed.

front panorama

Later research showed why: the building phase extended between 1881 to roughly 1930. The architect Walter Campbell (died 1914) was from the local aristocracy. This was the only building he designed, and it is fair to say he did not adhere to any stylistic orthodoxy. 

Andrew finds comfort at the reassuringly Norman altar

Critics may say the building is a pastiche or simply stylistically incongruous. My own take is that Walter Campbell, simply borrowed aspects of various styles he liked, as well making-up his own style. He clearly loved buildings so much, that he created his own celebration of architecture here. He pulled granite boulders off the hill above the kirk, and simply cemented them together to form rough-hewn columns that I have seen no-where else. A Caledonian Gaudi?

window from Iona Abbey - kirk also (allegedly) has bones from Robert the Bruce

As the style of the building is impossible to place, it engenders an other-worldly quality in the same way as the sets of "Game of Thrones". The look is somehow familiar, and thus feels real, but at the same time it is alien and thus not identifiable.

mini cloister is very "Game of Thrones"

I would say that while some detailing is ugly/crude, most gives delight. The craftsmanship is of generally high quality, and the whole is a work of integrity and passion. There is no reason why a building should adhere to rules, and when mavericks appear who are brave enough to plough their own furrow, we should find out what they can offer, rather than identify the rules they are breaking.

ugly or maverick glory? - the triangular windows are certainly unique

I was determined not to take photographs on the tour but to experience things for real instead. So while I did not have the time, inclination or a good enough camera  to document things, the panorama function on my smart phone was a useful way of capturing the mood of a place. More panoramas of other sites of interest will follow.

Turret Topping Out

There was a recent great day for celebration when the north-east turret of Balintore Castle had its final topping out i.e. when my roofer Andy had slated all the way from the bottom to the top. Hundreds of fish-scale slates had to be carved to replace those that were broken or missing. 

getting started : Ms. Balintore (1860) sports a 1980's ra-ra skirt

nailing on the tiny fish-scales slates at the very top

 toasting the turret with a West-Highland malt

Friends, who know of my low tolerance for alcohol, will be relieved to hear that I toasted the turret at a somewhat lower altitude! :-)

Groat

I am always dreaming of finding treasure at Balintore Castle to aid in its restoration. This blog post amply illustrates the divergence of dreams and reality, as a recent discovery of a 1838 silver groat under the floor-boards is by far the nearest thing to treasure yet uncovered. Yet, a groat is worth a mere 4d in old money or 1.6 p in new. 

The date of 1838 is  interesting as it pre-dates the construction of Balintore Castle in 1860. So, one presumes it was in circulation for at least 22 years before being lost - most likely during the building phase itself. Queen Victoria looks very young, and indeed she only came to power in the preceding year of 1837.

Groats ceased to be minted in 1856, which is a great shame as a coin worth four-pence has great numismatic charm.

Balintore groat: reverse

Balintore groat: obverse

Seven New Windows

Thanks to the carpentry skills of Bill Pitt and his posse in Kirriemuir, seven of the principal floor windows from Balintore Castle, have now been restored/rebuilt/replaced - depending on what was there, or not there, to begin with. These are all of the windows on the building's principal floor with the exception of those making up the dining room's oriel window. The oriel's super-structure collapsed about sixteen years ago, so this needs rebuilding before any consideration is given to re-manufacturing the three component sash windows which were crushed in the fall.

As you can tell from the photographs, the sash windows on the principal floor are enormous - the biggest in the castle. Five of us carried each window from the van to the drawing room, where they are now awaiting installation. For one of the windows I left the others to it, and recorded the trip in photographs. Knees were definitely buckling even more. 

I can barely wait for these windows to be installed as they will make a significant different to the look of the outside of the castle, and bring much needed light into the castle's interior - currently rather dark as the window openings are boarded up. 

Above all, I am looking forward to looking through the bay window in the drawing room, as the looks southwards across the Quharity Glen: the very view that caused the castle to be build in the first place, in its elevated position on the side of Cat Law mountain.

extracting the window from the van

frog-marching the window to the entrance

in through the entrance door

steering round a tight corner

bringing window to rest in the drawing room

pile of new windows in drawing room - awaiting installation

Carrach Windfarm Redux

I have just had some awful news: a planning application was submitted at the beginning of this month for a wind farm immediately opposite Balintore Castle.

This is the third application by the same developers since 2008 so you can imagine how ground down my neighbours and I have been fighting these proposals.

Objections have to submitted within a week, so there is little time for action. Please help me object by filling-up the online form provided by Angus Council here. No need to write an essay on why you object, a sentence will be fine.

My own objection letter to the planning officer at Angus Council is appended. This will help you understand my position. The location of the two turbines, reduced in number from the previous application, and their relation to the view from Balintore Castle is shown in the map below.

location of two proposed wind turbines adjacent to Balintore Castle

Letter To Angus Council Planning Department

Dear Mr. Taylor,

I wish to object in the strongest possible terms to planning application 14/00276/FULL henceforth referred to as the Carrach Wind Farm.

The wind turbines will be close to and visible from Balintore Castle. This is a Grade A listed Baronial building (1860) which is the late masterpiece of its Scottish architect William Burn (1789-1870). With the cooperation of Angus Council, I have devoted my life to restoring this building, and the Carrach Wind Farm would devastate the setting. To permit this development would be very much like Angus Council scoring an “own goal”.

The appeal from the developers regarding their previous Carrach Wind Farm application, was rejected by the reporter from the Scottish government. The decision and reasoning can be found in Angus Council Report No 81/13

The reporter’s conclusion was that no wind farm should ever be built in this location. You can imagine how that this third planning application for a Carrach WInd Farm is twisting a knife in a wound that is already deep and longstanding, The blight of the Carrach Wind farm has been hanging over the Glen Quharity since 2008. It is a common tactic of planning applications to scale the development down, in an attempt to look not too bad in the light of the previous application, and this is a feature of 14/00276/FULL . I entreat Angus Council to look at the application on its own (de?)merits: the arguments of the Council’s report 81/13 are still valid and I ask the Council to honour their report and reject 14/00276/FUL.

My neighbours, the residents of this intimate unspoiled glen, thought that with the reporter’s assurance of no more wind farms we were perhaps safe. There is a clear need for a coordinated national policy for dealing with wind farm applications, otherwise Councils and local inhabitants will be exhausted and overwhelmed by successive applications in the same location (as here) or in the same vicinity.,

I quote sections 3.2, 3.59 and 3.65 of the Council’s report 81/13 as my own reasons for recommending refusal.

3.2 Planning permission was refused for the following reasons:

(1) The development would result in unacceptable adverse landscape impacts having regard to landscape character and setting within the immediate and wider landscape and, as such, is contrary to policy 6 of TAYplan and policies ER5 and ER34 (criterion b) of the Angus Local Plan Review 2009.

(2) The development would have an unacceptable visual impact on the occupants of residential properties and the wider landscape and, as such, is contrary to policy 6 of TAYplan and policies S1 criterion (b), S6 criterion (b), ER34 criterion (a) and policy ER35 criterion (c) of the Angus Local Plan Review (2009).

3.59 The significance of the views out from the castle raised by the proprietor in relation to its status as a grade A listed building (as opposed to residential amenity, considered elsewhere in this notice) is a different matter, which appears to be somewhat discounted by Historic Scotland. However I note that the Historic Scotland description of the listed building refers to the “extensive views to the east and south”. The site visit confirmed that the castle tower has a high level balustraded viewing platform, served by a spiral stair and some tiny rooms/stores in the corner turrets, so it is easy to envisage that residents and visitors would visit the platform to enjoy the view. Similarly the castle sits on an extensive terrace, supported by a substantial retaining wall, which also gives panoramic views across the countryside to the east and south. Thus, in the circumstances pertaining to this particular building and chosen site, I accept the argument that the castle has been located and designed so that the occupants can take advantage of these views in a similar manner to enjoying views over an extensive abutting designed landscape. I also agree that given the effort that is going into the restoration of the building, and the public interest in completing the restoration of this listed building, it is important to ensure that the success of the restoration project is not undermined by any harmful changes to the building’s wider setting.

3.65 On balance, taking account of the very attractive rural landscape character of this area and the serious visual intrusion that would be obvious in the locality on a daily basis for a very long period, I consider that the modest contribution that would be made to renewable energy targets by this relatively small wind farm together with the temporary benefit to the local economy during construction and the continuing income to the two farm businesses during the operational period are insufficient to outweigh the harm resulting from landscape impact, and hence to do not justify a departure from the planning policies. This outcome is in line with national policy (Scottish Planning Policy paragraph 187) which states that wind farm proposals should be supported where environmental impacts can be satisfactorily addressed, which I consider is not the case at this site.

These three sections can be summarised as valid planning objection criteria of “setting of listed building” and “bad neighbour”.

My immediate neighbours and I were not on the developer’s list of notified neighbours. This is despite the fact that the developers are keenly aware, as stated in their documentation, that a large part of the previous rejection was based on the impact on Balintore Castle. It is distressing that they they have not done the courtesy of communicating with me, especially when the timescales as here are very tight i.e. there is only around a month for objections to be lodged. Thankfully, I was informed by some eagle-eyed neighbours,

Yours sincerely,

Dr. David Johnston
Balintore Castle
DD8 5JS

Balintore Fiction

My friend Madeleine has written a short ghost story about Balintore Castle. It is based on a story that her parents made up to scare her. Because Madeleine to too young to be a blogger, she has asked me to put the story on my blog! 

The New Servant

There was a new servant at Balintore Castle. Mae was her name; she looked of the wild sort, messy hair, twinkling eyes, merry laugh but she was hopeless. Victoria the housekeeper would have to confine her to the kitchen even though she was she was the house maid. The kitchen maid was always frowning at her or shaking her head and even though Mae seemed always happy, she felt excluded from all the other servants.

David Lyon was coming to the castle for autumn shooting and the place needed tidying up. Victoria shoved Mae out of the kitchen, thinking she would trip and fall in the jelly or put salt in the cake instead of sugar, and told her to make herself useful by dusting the top room of the great tower. Mae climbed the never ending circle of spiral stairs armed with dusters and brooms. Reaching the top, Mae busied herself with sweeping away the dust.

She glanced at the window, it was a horrific sight to anyone who was a servant or had been in domestic service. You could not see anything, the dirt and grime covered the glass and filth ran in streaks over the wood. Mae set to work and after an hour there was no improvement. She opened the window thinking the problem was on the outside, the window started to clear. But lo!

The wood was slightly unstable and she slipped and fell to her death. Her ghost still haunts the tower replaying the moment just before she died.

New Lintels for Old

Lintels are horizontal beams that run across the top of wall openings, such as doors and windows. They transfer the load of the wall above to the sides of the opening. We are all familiar with the re-enforced concrete lintels of modern construction.

At Balintore Castle most of the openings are topped by arches, which survive the test of time well: witness the Norman cathedrals which are still with us. The few lintels at Balintore Castle (8 in number) are unfortunately wood, and as water has poured into the building for many decades these are all suffering, to a greater or lesser extent, from dry rot.

Over the past few months, the wooden lintels have all been replaced by concrete ones. This has been a major job, but one which will keep the building standing well into the future. 

How do you take out a wooden lintel and put in a concrete one without a building falling down? Here's how. The silver attachment on top of the rather rusty accro-prop is called a "strong boy". This holds the wall up while the lintels are swapped - you can see the wooden lintel in the photo is in a very bad condition indeed.

strong boy supporting wall

Removing a lintel is no trivial task. It is embedded in a wall so the surrounding masonry has to be chopped out. Don't forget that the lintels in Balintore are massive. The one lying on the stairs below was above a drawing room window: a glove is shown for scale. This lintel is in pretty good nick, but there is dry rot at the ends.

wooden lintel removed from drawing room window

The wooden lintels above the bay windows were further connected by massive cast iron angle brackets: a glove is shown for scale. This made the task of getting the lintels out the wall even more complicated.

cast iron bracket for joining wooden lintels

Basement Lintel

You can see from the before photograph that this lintel at the bottom of the entrance tower in the basement was in an appalling condition.

before: wooden basement lintel

Here's the concrete replacement, photographed from the same side:

after: basement concrete lintel from front

Looking underneath you can see that three concrete lintels are required side-by-side to replace the massive old wooden one:

after: basement concrete lintel from back

Entrance Hall Lintel

The entrance hall lintel is also in a shocking state:

before: wooden entrance hall lintel from back

after: concrete entrance hall lintel from the front

after: concrete entrance hall lintel from the back

Three Drawing Room Window Lintels

before: wooden drawing room window lintels

after: concrete drawing room window lintels

Three Dressing Room Window Lintels

As the wall finished a foot or so above the dressing room window lintels, it was simpler to dismantle the top of the wall, replace the lintels and then rebuild:

during: first concrete lintel positioned after removing stone

after: concrete dressing room window lintels with wall above rebuilt

Thanks to Adam and Barrie (ably assisted by Andy) for all their hard work.