Poltalloch House

Before I write anything else, I'd like to thank Andy Malcolm for permitting me to access and take photographs. Please, if you are in the area, this site is on private land, highly dangerous and access is prohibited, not only for these reasons!

For the most part, science monitors the effects of urban sprawl on nature. This is a rare example of the opposite.
Poltalloch house was built by William Burn between 1849 and 1853 as a new seat for the Malcom family. I have found an early photograph to show what this impressive house looked like before a fire devastated the building. Too costly to repair, the roof of this mansion was removed in 1957 and the house has since been left to be reclaimed by mother nature. Now trees grow from inside the building out and the decaying walls are covered with mosses, lichens and ferns. There is no access to the site also because the walls continue to crumble, floors crash into what were once servants quarters and the cellars and what remain of any wooden roof structures cave in all too regularly, but for science it is an important site to monitor as new life creeps in between the stones and gradually takes back the building for itself.

Although it is on the Scottish Buildings at Risk register, the chances of it ever being repaired are as remote as you or I having a holiday on Mars. I've taken a series of photographs which I'd like to share and will add a link to them in the next few days. It's an astonishingly beautiful place which has an air of history which, given the age, that it really never had and of ghosts that never existed. This is just one of the many rooms, photographed from the outside in. A view of the building as it presents from the west side can be seen here, although I might re edit later. Come back for more soon.