Poltalloch

We are three blippers all staying together in Argyll with Kirsty, Helena and Tanya’s mother, and we decided today to join in the ‘Derelict Thursday’ challenge organised by SarumStroller. We’d been offered the chance to visit the once very grand, but now extremely derelict, Poltalloch mansion, situated about thirty miles south of Oban, which is part of a large estate belonging to a cousin of their mother’s friend, Kim.

We arrived at our rendezvous at about midday to meet Robin, the owner of the estate, and we all then drove across their extensive farmland up the original drive to Poltalloch. The house is slowly merging back into the land having lost its roof in the 1950s, after only a hundred years of usage. You can search online and find out a great deal about its history, as well as finding pictures of it in its heyday.

Robin did live in the house when he was young, but only on and off, and his cousin Kim visited at various times and told us he had stayed there for Christmas in 1939. Nowadays Robin lives in another home nearby, which is a 12th century castle, from where he continues to farm the land. He explained a bit of the story of the house as we walked up the last stretch of the drive and told us we could take photographs. We were very lucky as this is all private land, and not open to the public at all, because of the inherent dangers from the collapsing structures.

Tanya, Helena and I wandered around the outer walls, but unfortunately the light was very poor, as the rain only stopped falling as we reached the house. I am blipping the far side of the house from the drive which gives you an idea of its approximate width. On the left is a further large walled section of the building and a former conservatory behind my left shoulder. The front of the house on the right looked south towards the sea and the Crinnan peninsular, with wonderful vistas leading down through the meadows with sections of hilly woodland on either side. Half of the front of the house is now covered with evergreen bushes, whilst in the interior, where there are no floors left at all, massively tall trees grow right through the centre of the grand old rooms. As you can see here they also come straight out through the window frames. The tree tops you can see behind the house on the right are actually rooted in the front drawing rooms.

It is very sad to see it in this condition, but there is no way back for this building. It had dry rot, amongst many other problems. I would like to thank Robin for not only letting us see the house but also for showing it to us in person.

After we left we visited the museum in the nearby town of Kilmartin where we had an excellent lunch before us blippers left to drive on to Arduaine Gardens, about ten miles north on the road to Oban.

There we managed to meet another fellow blipper, Maurice1948 , for a short chat before we took a quick tour of the beautiful gardens which he manages.

Tanya's blip adds to the stroy and has a different view to see, with a link to her Flickr gallery too.

Sheenagh blipped the house last year, which is worth seeing here.

This is Woodpeckers blip of it today.