inshriach

We usually get into our stride quite gently with a couple of repeat bookings through February but this year, with some ambitious plans requiring funding, it seems like a good plan to let the world know that we have availability between the 4th and the 18th February and again from the 25th to the 4th March. £2200 for a full week or £1650 for a Thursday to Monday weekend. And its a beautiful day, carpeted with snow and with more forecast.

Anyone fancy a ski?

This is the Edwardian squash court, or at least one of the versions of it that are kicking about. Its a tremendous building and a huge rarity and at the moment it leads the race to be the next building to be converted. There is no doubt it has the potential to be something really special and give accommodation somewhere between the two people in splendid off grid woodland isolation that the yurt and bothy offer, and the 15 or so people in country house comfort than the main house provides. Also as we get moving with the music schools we need buildings that are both livable and workable and nothing we have now is suitable.

Each clever bunch of people to pass by add another layer, some very good ideas and some well meaning but less well founded. We are filtering through interpretations from builders, architects and anyone else who pops in for a cup of tea and it is improving as and end product all the time. We are debating whether we can keep the original staircase to the gallery, whether the lobby can stretch to take a bathroom, does it get a second bedroom or is it an uber honeymoon suite? What is certain is that there is going to be a lot of glazing and a lot of insulation and underfloor heating, that I have just pulled nails out of 750 square feet of reclaimed oak parquet and it will have big views across the valley. It must hang onto its identity, its volume, its purpose and its height, and as much of the original detail and material as possible.

At the same time as this we are thinking of putting a recording, rehearsal and even performance studio down in the farmyard, and that’s a whole other set of drawings.

As we put our heads together to organise the 5th Insider festival (21st – 23rd June this year) we realised we were in a pretty unique position. We have some of the finest musicians in Scotland at our fingertips, a super musical community living and teaching at Inshriach and a beautiful and conducive part of the world in which to operate and yet each year we throw all our resources at a mighty weekend long crescendo of musicality.

We thought maybe it was time to start a music school. And why not start one in style.

So this year we are getting the festival infrastructure in early and from Monday 17th June until the festival opens on the 21st our very own fiddle superstar Charlie McKerron is putting together the first music school. With the help of Tim Edey and Ross Ainslie and a further two fiddle tutors still to be confirmed, plus visiting tutors and masterclasses, the school will have a maximum capacity of 80, includes food and camping and will cost £350 per head or £400 with a full weekend festival ticket (that’s half price).

This one is not really aimed at beginners but we have more in the pipeline and have already had requests to put together programmes focused on the harp, pipes and guitar, covering both weekend and week long courses and for various different abilities. We have also been approached by two or three superstar bands who would like to run their own courses here.

Not only that but plans are in the pipeline to convert some of the buildings down on the farm to provide acccommodation, studio, rehearsal and recording facilities to cater for smaller, more specialised groups, year round, without sleeping in a field and without going to the expense of using Inshriach House.

It’s early doors for this scheme so we would very much appreciated your feedback and ideas. We are getting a website together over at www.inshriachmusic.co.uk but for the time being if you want to know more please email [email protected].

Watch this space.

This is the one we have been putting off. About 10 years ago the old oil boiler chuffed a cloud of soot up the cellar stairs which rolled on a ball of warmth to the top of the house and settled in the lightwell. We gave it a clean 5 years ago and put the slight dinge it left behind down to authentic and atmospheric Edwardian patina. The problem was that from the back door the corridors connect the laundry room to the kitchen to the front hall, then go up a flight of stairs and from the housekeepers room at the end to the door to the front landing and gallery, and then up again to the attic door through a huge square lightwell that is 2 stories high. There is probably the same surface area in those non-rooms as there is in a 2 bedroom house. Plus lots of pictures (all with little moustache swags of cobwebs behind them), mirrors, and all the little holes from previous pictures and mirrors.

So me and mum took it on (partly for want of something to do indoors in what is always a quiet stretch mid December) and after a marathon 2 days the difference it has made is extraordinary, the backstairs is now so clean and smart I don’t want to put any of the pictures back up.

Due to a change of plans on our part we now have both Christmas and New Year available at Inshriach House, advertised at the reduced price of £3500 per week but seeing as it it getting late in the day you could find us open to a sensible offer. Seeing as The Times had us as one of the 20 best places for Hogmanay last week you could be getting yourself a bargain.

Especially as the ski area has opened today and the view from the kitchen window this morning looks a lot like this.

And in late breaking news I’m told that the episode of George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces that features the Beermoth is going to be showing on the 20th November at 8pm on channel 4. Or catch it in your own time on 4OD.

There are moves afoot to choose next year’s building project. Our friend Hannah is drawing up plans to convert the steading, build a barn / studio, convert the squash court and to build a new / reconstituted Victorian bothy in the farm. One of them will emerge as the favourite, the precise combination of disposable funds, long term benefit, helpful friends and available materials being the deciders.

Anyone who fancies coming round here on a rainy afternoon and helping me pull nails out of this acreage of oak parquet would be very welcome. It came out of Cafe Mambos (under new management and being refitted) and it looks like there might be just enough to do the ground floor of a squash court….

And if anyone is in the market for an MGBGT we seem to have a surfeit.

There has been a years break on sorting out the other buildings at Inshriach. This one, known as the bothy has at various times been the estate laundry, the workshops, ski sheds and assorted gun and chimney brush cupboard, then it became a summer house, occasional music studio and a house again, by which point, externally at least, it was in a bit of a state. The back half of the building was painted with modern vinyl paint and on the front the limewash was worn thin in the places you wanted it thick and caked up in the mouldings and the details. Harry and I did a good go at taking the paint off the back half this time last year, at the same time removing all the smashed up gutters from this and the two adjoining sheds. The gutters got painted and now the rentals are quiet for the winter it’s time to get back on it and sand and scrape the rest of the building. I dont recommend sanding whole buildings, least of all ones with fiddly battens all over them, but after 4 days solid it’s finally making progress. The picture above shows the back half mid sand and the picture below is the front after the first coat of lime paint (a few more of those to come), and with some of the gutters finally back up.