A blast from the past

Today we had a visit from a gentleman who lived in Castlebank house in 1970s and his wife. We turned out to have quite a lot in common as they used to live in Skye. So there was much chat about the tribulations of living in very remote rural areas.

I showed them round the house and learned quite a lot about what the layout looked like then. The basement was almost entirely undeveloped and was a concrete shell rented out to students. The stairs were even then in the woeful state we found them in back in May. Most interestingly, we discovered that the wall between the master bedroom and the turret room may not have existed in 1970s. I gave some consideration to the idea that this might mean that the reception rooms had been on the first floor rather than the ground floor – but I have discarded it as the layout of the windows and fireplaces does not seem to tally with this. I really need to do a better search for the architectural plans of the house.

Two other interesting discoveries was that in 1970s there were black and white encaustic tiles in the vestibule – I had always suspected that this was the case but now I definitely need to lift a bit of the carpet and have a look. Also, where J’s bedroom is, there were the original (and functional) servants’ bells for the house. The area where they were is now covered with plasterboard, and I have it in mind to make a little hole and insert a camera to take a look. Having said this, if we do find them I am not so sure that J is very enthusiastic about this as a feature in the room where he sleeps!

Anyway, we had a very pleasant afternoon, even if we did discover that the initials our visitor had carved in the cedar tree were too high up to attempt to take a look.

I made sandwiches, sausage rolls and an apple pie, and we had cakes and scones from Fraser and Donaldson. As ever I meant to take a photo of the table after it had been laid and forgot. So here is a picture of what was left – there was not much.

Our guests also bought us a lovely bunch of flowers.