Tiree Lodge

Today's the day .................... to accommodate

A stunner of a day today - and as this is where we're calling home at the moment - we were well placed for spending a large part of it down at the beach.  The sea was warm enough to tempt me in for a swim - the first time in many months.

We don't usually stay much in hotels, but we thought we would treat ourselves this time.  The Lodge was originally built in the 1860s as a school and then became the gamekeeper’s house on the estate of the Duke of Argyll.  It was added to and enlarged and became 'a mansion, or a villa, or a palace, according to the ideas of those who watched its walls breaking the outlines of the Bay of Gott'.  In 1897 the Duke of Argyll wrote to his sister, Lady Victoria Campbell, concerning the Lodge, which was being made ready for her occupation. “The rent I want to charge you on your Tiree Mansion is one Barley Corn, and I will tell Howe to make up a lease for life.” 

During the Second World War it was used as an Officers' Mess where the cook was one Alf Bruton from Oxford.  Lady Peggy Hoare from Gloucester rented the Lodge for shooting parties after the war - and in 1957 Alf, who had married a Ruaig girl, bought the Lodge and set it up as a hotel.  

And I have to say that we're finding ourselves very at home here ...................