When, in the late 1960s, Gerald Laing first came across Kinkell Castle, north of Inverness, it had been abandoned for decades. That would have put off most potential buyers but, as an artist, Laing had a strong sense of the aesthetic potential of the 16th-century building.
He discovered it belonged to a distant cousin of his, negotiated a price of £5,000, to include a couple of acres of ground, and spent a year working alongside local artisans making it habitable. Crucially, he was untrammelled by red tape and bureaucracy.
When he decided to demolish an 18th-century extension that had been tacked on to the side, he had only to deal with his accountant, who was concerned about the property being devalued by the number of rooms being halved.
But Laing says his motives were not financial. “The point of rebuilding Kinkell Castle was to savour the 16th-century architecture and, by so doing, to understand more of the past and its similarities to — rather than its differences from — the present.”
He believes the architecture of the time focused on the vertical rather than the horizontal because of the need for fortification and defence against marauders. The original gun loops that pepper the walls would appear to support his theory.
Laing, 70, is a respected artist and sculptor, both in the UK and America. He served for eight years on the Royal Fine Art Commission for Scotland.
But he and his wife, Galina, were novices to the building trade. Their naive hope had been to start by fixing the roof so they would have a place to live while they completed the project. But they were warned it would be dangerous to try to work on the roof of a building whose supporting structure had not been secured.
The couple were not short on enthusiasm and began the task of throwing all the debris out of the upper-storey window by the shovel-full before any of the local workforce arrived. Laing says: “When our first worker turned up he showed us how to rig up a plank between the floor and the window so we could load up the wheelbarrow, then deposit the contents on the ground outside. It made me realise that even labouring has a great many skills attached.”
Doing up such an old building involved much historical detective work. In the course of discovering how the building had been constructed, Laing unearthed information about the circumstances of those involved. For example, the walls of Kinkell were formed using any stone that came to hand. This sort of construction is known as “the random rubble” method and indicates that the clan chief, John Roy Mackenzie — who had the castle built as a family home — was on a tight budget.
First Laing had the walls cleared of plaster, lath and dooks, and the mortar between the stones was chipped away by a couple of inches in preparation for replacement. Then skilled slaters were brought in to remove the roof tiles.
The next task involved getting joiners in to remove all the old woodwork, thereby revealing more about medieval building traditions. As the original beams on the ceiling of the great hall were being removed, it was discovered that they had been put in place before the walls had been finished. Laing’s architect decided the building required a steel structure to support the roof and a skilled mason got to work rebuilding the gaps in the walls.
Laing considers himself a trailblazer because he took on his restoration project when there was little interest in the built heritage of the Highlands. Native Highlanders were still concerned with moving out of their traditional stone-built houses and moving into modern, heated homes.
However, his example has created massive interest among restorers. The Scottish Civic Trust provides a one-stop shop for people who want to take on a piece of built heritage. The Buildings At Risk register for Scotland, which the trust operates on behalf of Historic Scotland, has about 180 Category A buildings — those of national or international importance — on its books.
Jane Nelson, an architect by profession and the Buildings At Risk officer for the Scottish Civic Trust, says: “The register is not intended to be a name-and-shame document to put the spotlight on negligent owners. We see it as part of our role to give encouragement and advice and to act as a catalyst in putting potential restorers in touch with owners of buildings at risk.”
While it is undoubtedly easier to find expert knowledge about the finer points of restoration nowadays than it was in the 1960s, the notion that there is a lot of financial help on hand is not true. Nelson says: “We say to people ‘Don’t do it if you have to rely on grant aid’. Historic Scotland has about £12m a year for the repair of historic buildings: assuming a cost of £2m per building and a repair grant of 25%, it would take seven years of the grant system to restore only 5% of buildings at risk.”
Nelson advises carrying out a conservation plan which, she says, need not be expensive. “It will alert the restorer to the cultural and heritage value of the property and give a clear picture of which features should be saved and what can be got rid of.”
The next stage is to get an estimate of cost, but there are varying perceptions of what is needed. Nelson cites one project which was estimated to require £2m but was eventually brought in at a quarter of that.
Laing was told Kinkell Castle would require £35,000 spent on it. By hiring direct labour and being hands-on, he got away with £12,000 and was able to secure generous grant aid.
Some of the most successful restorations in recent years have been by professional developers who are well placed to work alongside local authorities and Historic Scotland, which has to approve any work on both Category A and B buildings. Wardhouse in Aberdeenshire is a Category B mansion which is being sympathetically converted into seven apartments. Likewise, Dollarbegg in Clackmannanshire has found a new lease of life as luxury apartments.
With developers more willing to take on large schemes, suitable projects for individual restorers are few and far between. You’ll need money, time, energy and plenty of patience — dealing with statutory bodies can take ages.
But anyone who has ever stood in a room that was first inhabited hundreds of years ago will know the impulse that drives on the would-be castle builder. Certainly anyone stepping into the great hall at Kinkell Castle, where the television is snuggled in a corner next to an original fireplace marked 1594, will feel their heart yearn to live somewhere similar. There will always be prospectors inspecting piles of stones in Scotland’s remote fields, dreaming of how they can bring them back to life, wondering whether they are looking at their own castle in the air.
www.historic-scotland.gov.uk; www.scottishcivictrust.org.uk; www.buildingsatrisk.org.uk
