Click here to search commentonline

Hoots & Havers - April 2008

The state of Taymouth Castle has been a national disgrace for more than 50 years. In architectural and landscape terms, it could make Blair look like a potting shed. All it lacks is the latter’s moolah. Its builders were even more ruthless and rapacious than most Highland families in the way they clawed their way to wealth and power. The diarist James Robertson in 1843 described them as ‘the grasping and greedy Breadalbane family’ which is a bit like blaming a lion for having sharp teeth and claws. The Breadalbane line’s great mistake came in not marrying sufficiently wealthy heiresses sufficiently often down the centuries. And they were poor breeders. This led to the line being washed away by the tide of history.

The castle was built on the rents of thousands of their tenants, who were then thrown off their land during the Clearances. When Prince Leopold, son-in-law of George IV and later King of the Belgians and father of Empress Charlotte of Mexico, visited Taymouth in 1819, 1,238 Breadalbane tenants paraded dressed as pantomime Highland warriors to greet him. They mustered again some twenty years later to welcome Victoria and her husband. On the latter occasion the marquis was rather upset to find only 200 men from his estates answered his summons to come and play soldiers. His factor explained to him that they had gone, replaced on his instruction by sheep. 

Under its last owners the castle was left to rot and the grounds were a slum of decaying MoD sheds. The current owners were given their planning permissions so long as they secured the castle, a profitless activity for them but a critical one for the future of the structure. Then, several million pounds in, everything stopped and now we have a credit crunch and economic slow down. My guess would be that Taymouth is costing its owners £500,000 a year in interest payments and is not bringing in an income. And that’s not good.

The intention is that the grounds would be scattered with little holiday houses with salami-sliced ownership and a central hotel in the castle. It can be the only future for the estate. No rich individual will buy it as a country house. The building of the school and the houses within the west gate has put paid to that, as has been its long-established use as a local pleasure ground. So, if we ever hope to see anything other than a decaying mansion in the midst of a tangled wilderness plus some golfers, we should hope that the developers soon manage to get their act back together.

* * * * *

Since it was a lovely sunny spring day, I went a gentle potter up a hill in Glen Lyon along with a couple of companions and the dog. We took in lungfuls of good clean air, remarked on our good fortune in living so close to such beautiful landscape, admired the remains of the shieling huts and the grittiness of our predecessors who lived in them.

Then, just as we were thinking we had climbed far enough and lunch was beginning to call, round the shoulder of the hill and preceded by a scurry of sheep in search of shelter rolled a blizzard - stinging horizontal snow that blotted out the landscape and cut visibility to 30 yards. One thought of those tedious folk who bang on about how weather in the hills can change in seconds. And how important it was to spend hundreds of pounds in a mountain shop on sweaty garments in lurid colours that rustle and crackle and make you look like an urban prat. I’ve always preferred the Rab C Nesbitt school of hill walking which demands a minimum of trainers with not too many knots in their rotten laces and a packet of Woodbines. And if soggy wool was good enough for those who lived up there in the old days, it’s good enough for me.

The fluffy dog squeaked and demanded shelter beneath my jacket and we squelched down the hill, shoulders hunched, drifts piling on top of our heads, toes and fingers losing sensation by the minute. But, by the time we returned to the car the sun was shining once more. I will still refuse to dress properly. If things get dire there’s always the mobile phone with a helicopter at the end of it.

* * * * *

I can never claim to be a Wise Virgin. The latest manifestation of my unwisdom was being persuaded by a financial adviser/shark that it would be the bees’ knees to buy bank shares and put them into an ISA – not that I know what an ISA is - just before credit crunched. I’ve been getting poorer by the day ever since and now we wait for house prices to fall. The only question is by how much.

It seems that lenders have realised that throwing money that doesn’t exist at houses buyers is little more than a recipe for bankruptcy for them as well as their borrowers. Back in the year dot when I took out my first mortgage, one was expected to produce a deposit of 25% and was lent 2 1/2 times one’s income, but that was before banks turned very, very silly and their boy wonders became very rich by persuading them that money grew on trees. I suppose money would be found on trees if sufficient numbers of people believed it because money is nothing more than belief. The inflation in Zimbabwe shows just what happens when people lose faith in it.

Money was probably invented by some clown a couple of hundred thousand years ago who exchanged the butt end of a mammoth for a quantity of flint arrowheads and persuaded other people that he’d invented economics. If only he’d decided to charge a couple of kisses instead. How much greater would be the sum of human happiness. Think of the wonderful orgy one would now have to offer when it came to buying a house. Or the mortgage which demanded so many kissings or couplings a year. Of course the vendor of the mammoth steak might have demanded a good deed or virtuous living for a set period in exchange for his mammoth steak. And now to be mega-rich would be synonymous with being a saint.