UKC

It seems that Jimmy Savile’s cottage in Glencoe has been gutted by fire. Just seen it on this website:

https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/2011810/jimmy-saviles-scottish-lai...

Reason I’m posting it here is that this was of course, before Savile bought it, Hamish Macinnes’s home in Glencoe.

Shit happens 🤣

Wasn't it bought years back to be converted into a rich tossers kind of country home?

It was great in MacInnes' day. Today... not so much. Too much traffic, limited land, too much baggage.

I think it should probably be demolished and the land restored.

Permission was granted for redevelopment in 2024.

https://wam.highland.gov.uk/wam/applicationDetails.do?keyVal=S3GDYYIHI9K00&...

People are stupid. Mindless vandalism because a criminal once lived there.

I can't imagine anyone redeveloping the site for fear of what might happen to their efforts. So the ruins are left as a monument to a predator.

Prior to the revelations, the house was a waymark on long journeys to Scotland. Peering through rain soaked windows hoping to catch a glimpse of white hair, cigar and tracksuit. Same conversation every time, Hamish, Jimmy, unhonoured fix it requests.

I guess it still is but much less cheery.

I agree that this is surely the best option now. Because surely no one would want a ruin left as ‘a monument to a criminal’, as someone else has said, and surely we much respect the feels of the majority of locals who almost certainly think the same way? (i.e. I very much doubt whether this was ‘mindless vandalism’ but suspect it was very deliberate.)

I wouldn’t be so certain about speaking for the majority of locals. While I am in no way local to the Glen I did live there for 3 and a bit years, some years prior to Savile buying it. To me it has always been Allt na Reigh or Hamish’s old cottage.

Possibly the locals will be glad that now it’s been burnt, the internet chatterers, most of whom at best have maybe driven past it once, will direct their unsolicited opinions elsewhere.

Almost certainly an act of arson, I hope whoever did it is caught and prosecuted in the same way they would had they torched an anonymous building.

Gavin Taylor who used to post on here regularly grew up there. I wonder what he thinks of it.

Or insurance ?? When was the house built? It looked 1960s to me, unmarkable and not well positioned by the road.

Predates that,Before Hamish had it  was a roadman's house and was the site of a croft before then. As far as I know there has been a building on the site since  at least the 19th century. A wee bit before my time admittedly. I never thought of it as Saville's house. Apart from Allt na Righ that corner of Glencoe also housed the Rannoch Doss just down the burn from Allt na Righ and The "Bendy"under the bridge - now sadly all gone. 

I had a quick look on the early OS maps and it isn’t on the late 19th c. edition, though the OS maps aren’t infallible. It’s on an awkward join of two maps as well. From distant memory of its construction it’s almost certainly no later than mid-20th and probably earlier.

I wonder when it was first described as a "lair"?

There seems to be something on the 1900 6" map next to spot height 649.  Unclear if its the house or barn.  Does this link work?

https://maps.nls.uk/view/75478725

Edit:  Two buildings marked  here, surveyed pre 1872.  It (or something on the site) is old.

https://maps.nls.uk/view/216390573

If you use the georeferenced map feature it displays all the separate maps joined together, e.g: https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=16.9&lat=56.66578&lon=-4.9782... (that's using the six-inch second edition maps dated 1888 to 1915).

It certainly looks like there's a reasonable-sized building where the road (such as it was in those days) crosses the watercourse shown as Allt Ruigh, and if you move the transparency slider (at the bottom left of the map window) to the left then, allowing for the fact that the old and modern maps are slightly out of register, it looks like it is on the site of what later became Hamish's home.

Of course, there's no way to know from the map alone whether it's actually the same building.

It’s shame it’s associated with JS, in my mind it’s still Hamish’s cottage near the Drey. 

Well spotted, I was looking at them on my phone. I'm sure the house has been extended over the years but memory tells me the long barn above the old road (immediately above the current road) is obviously old and rubble built.

Absolutely 

Exactly; I’d have expected the thread title on a climbing forum to be about “Hamish MacInnes’ cottage”, not about the other guy’s.

That would be as old hat as referring to the Gulf of Mexico.

Or Snowdon.

Haha… or „Denali“

It was a bit of a shock to find out it was 'Jimmy's House' on google maps, thankfully it has lost that label now (but still has links to his name).

Dear God. As if all the recent news about Google hadn't painted them in a bad enough light.

Anne and I walked past this a few hours ago today (the 14th).

It looks like the outbuildings just up the road a few M’s from the house were the ones on fire. Strong small of burnt material. House looked a mess, but no fire that I could see.

Ah ha, thanks. Indeed, it was outbuildings which were referred to in the BBC report at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9vm220x7dmo, but it is helpful to have that confirmed by someone on the ground.

Meanwhile, more optimistically, this:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgx74d313zo