Kinlochmoidart House, Inverness-shire
Designed by the Glaswegian architect William Leiper, Kinlochmoidart was built in 1884 in exuberant baronial style for Robert Stewart, a distiller and the great grandfather of the present owner Mrs Nino Stewart. Situated in a remote part of western Inverness-shire, the house was in a parlous condition and under threat of demolition when Simpson & Brown first became involved. Despite being almost entirely uninhabitable and racked by damp and decay - to the extent that every one of its fifty rooms was significantly affected by wet or dry rot - Kinlochmoidart still retained its original decoration and furnishings, severely damaged but quite remarkably unaltered.
In probably the largest exercise of its kind in Scotland, the dry rot was successfully tackled in an ecological manner without the use of any chemical treatment. Spread over many phases, the house was painstakingly restored with the help of grants from Historic Scotland. The work required exceptional attention to detail and included the restoration of original hand-printed, hand-embossed and hand-stencilled wallpapers, and the retention of switches and other parts of the remarkable original electrical installation.
As well as a house for Mrs Stewart herself, Kinlochmoidart was carefully subdivided to form four houses for holiday-letting, thus providing it with an income.
