The fiery history of Badenoch's 'Monarch o' the Glen' big hoose
Ardverikie House is well-known as the TV home Glenbogle but had already been at the centre of a major drama long before that.
One of the strath’s most recognisable landmarks was nearly lost to history as a new publication ‘Ardverikie: A Castle in the Air’ recounts.
“Towards the end of last week a painful feeling was created by the intelligence that Ardverikie Lodge, the Highland residence of Sir John Ramsden of Byrom Hall, had been almost totally destroyed by fire on Wednesday morning,” reported the Inverness Courier of October 23, 1873.
“Besides a heavy pecuniary sacrifice, the calamity involves the loss of the original sketches of some of Landseer’s finest pictures, which were valued at £10,000, but which no money can replace.
“Altogether, including those pictures, the loss in money value is probably not much less than £25,000.”
The disaster wiped out the two years and £9,000-worth of developments made to the original lodge (about £750,000 in today’s money) – the inferno struck on the very day the labour was paid off for the completion of the work.
According to the record of Sir John’s son, Sir John Frecheville Ramsden, it almost wiped out the family too. They escaped by boat after ‘the fire was caused by the precautions for safety taken by the cook, who removed the remains of the kitchen fire from the grate and placed the embers and ashes for greater safety in coal scuttles along wooden partitions.
‘A woman of strong character, she was able to divert the efforts of some of those engaged in rescuing from the flames furniture and books to the salvage of her store of jam...’.
A lesser mortal would have given it up as a bad lot but landowner of landowners Ramsden was no ordinary man, as Richard Sidgwick’s comprehensive study proves: “What Sir John Ramsden refused to acknowledge was that expenditure on Highland estates did not necessarily add to their value.
“He may have been one of the first to live with this reality, but many would subsequently learn the lesson to their discomfort.
“During the first 10 years of his ownership of the estate, he funded an average annual deficit of £38,000, or the equivalent of £225,000 in 2020. In the succeeding three decades the average annual figure was £14,000, equivalent to £100,000 today.
“Over 100 years later, the Ardverikie Estate Co. has annual expenditure in the region of £1.33m.”
So it’s not altogether surprising that Ramsden promptly set about not just repairing the damage but creating a veritable ‘castle in the air’.
Yet Sidgwick muses: “Quite why Sir John should have decided to replace a traditional lodge on which he had spent so much money with a monumentally spectacular mansion house is open to question. “He was not flamboyant by nature, but he was unaccustomed to second best and it mattered to him that his achievement and surroundings were at least the equal to his peers.”
The discrimination and determination – not to mention vast wealth – of this Victorian patriarch was to give the strath one of its most recognisable landmarks which in turn was to flower into a positive magnet for the TV and film industry.
Even before its modern incarnation, the scintillating place had attracted Queen Victoria and John Brown – not bad for starters – and it now boasts among its high-profile visitors the Monarch of the Glen and 007 himself.
And then there’s the vastness of the estate. This volume, compiled at the family’s request by surely the man most qualified to access all areas – from diaries, letters, accounts, sketchbooks etc – is hugely absorbing.
Its 60 pages of appendices would be worth the read alone.
Ardverikie: A Castle in the Air is available in paperback at £15 (204pp) from Ardverikie Estate Office. (01528 544 300)
