Scotland’s New Country Hotel Rules

Fiona Duncan, editor of Great British & Irish Hotels, delves into the designers stripping the tartan out of Scotland’s country hotels and weaving in the whimsical.

The Best New Scottish Country Hotels

It all started, of course, with the Fife Arms. Opened in 2019 by the King, then Prince Charles, owned by Iwan and Manuela Wirth, filled with world class art set against lavish maximalist interiors by Russell Sage, the revamped Victorian coaching inn sent an in-crowd running over the hills to Scotland, many of them for the first time.

No one, hitherto, could accuse Scottish country hotels of being trendy, design-led crowd pleasers. They were (and many still are) tartan-clad, whisky-walled time warps encased in sturdy Scottish baronial houses amidst awe inspiring landscapes. In other words, they had a sense of place, of tradition and of purpose – but they were hardly cutting edge.

Personally, I love a traditional Scottish hotel, as long as it also keeps up with the times. I can be assured of a warm welcome, a dizzying selection of wee drams after dinner, proper porridge or kippers for my breakfast and a tartan carpet or two to give me a sense of place. The Torridon, in far flung Wester Ross, is a fine example; Glenapp Castle, on the Firth of Clyde is another; and the just reopened Fortingall in Perthshire, again gloriously set and designed by Anbôise Interiors, is another. 

On a smaller scale, Gordon Campbell Gray has brought a perfect mix of modern sensibility (learned through the many high profile, high style international hotels he has created in his stellar career), and a deep appreciation of his homeland, where he now lives, to two special places: The Three Chimneys on Skye and the Pierhouse on the shores of Loch Linnhe, with breathtaking views to Lismore and Mull.

But there’s nothing wrong with disruption, and the Scottish country hotel scene does need a bit of a stir. Luckily, wherever they work, Russell Sage never forgets its history, traditions, stories and crafts and the Fife Arms, while full of wow factor and a repository of international art, is also still thoroughly Scottish.

Next up, Sage turned his attention to two hotels belonging to whisky distilleries and in both, while still applying local motifs and employing local craftsmen and women, he has let rip. If you want to see disruption in action, head for Glenmorangie House, formerly a bastion of old-fashioned Scottish hospitality. While the service remains as warm, local and kindly as ever, the radical, whimsical interiors weave a spell around the theme of Glenmorangie whisky. The lovely morning room, for example, is designed to echo a field of barley; both its walls and ceiling are clad in gold, the bespoke wallpaper strewn with wildflowers, with sofas of burnished orange, and a swathe of swaying barley along the mantelpiece. Bedrooms evoke different Glenmorangie whiskies: spice-and-tropical-fruit flavoured Reserve, for example, is summed up by a fantasy of being shipwrecked on an imaginary desert island, complete with painted tiger hidden in the wardrobe.

Over to the magical island of Islay and one of the hottest hotel openings this year. I was at Ardberg Hotel for its launch in September and if I thought Russell Sage had let fly (delightfully so) at Glenmorangie House, he’s gone into orbit at Ardbeg. Here the former Islay Hotel in Port Ellen has become an unforgettable place to stay while revelling in Ardbeg’s famously smoky, peaty single malt and discovering the island. The result is bold, fun, brooding, bonkers and rooted in local arts and crafts, myths and legends – and it has given both Ardbeg and Islay distinct edge.

A very different brand of stylishness is on offer at WildLand, comprising three Highland estates owned by Danish aesthete and billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen, where self-catering cottages and exclusive-use lodges can be rented and there are also two exceptional hotels, Killiehuntly and Lundies House. The latter, in far north Sutherland – with its beautiful, artistic Scandi-Scot interiors, superb food, blissful comfort and heart-stopping remoteness – is a jewel, and one of the most extraordinary places you will ever stay in Scotland, if you make it that far.

Talk about staying traditional yet keeping up with the times. The hottest Scottish opening this year, in my book, is not Ardbeg but Penicuik House, run as a fully staffed luxury hotel (reception, chefs, housekeepers, bar, etc) but available only for exclusive use (32 in the house, plus another 16 in the five adorable, stylish, superbly equipped cottages on the estate). If they, designed by Edinburgh-based studio Fantoush, are exquisite as well as deeply comfortable, Penicuik House is sensational: rational, colourful, modern-classic interiors set off by a vast array of ancestral portraits, furniture and objects belong to the Clerk family, owners of the Penicuik Estate since 1654. The interior designer here is Colin Orchard, famed for his grand country houses, including Ballyfin Hotel in Ireland.

It has so much going for it. As well as enjoying Penicuik House and the cottages (which can be rented individually when available) guests are free to roam the walking trails through this historically important 18th century-designed landscape dotted with follies and created by Sir John Clerk, a leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment. The centrepiece is the preserved ruins of the family’s Palladian mansion, Old Penicuik House, which was destroyed by a fire in 1899 – a tale in itself. Penicuik is now run by Ed Clerk, with his purpose to regenerate his family’s estate using a self-repairing form of high end, discrete, exclusive hospitality that is hard to beat. And it has one more advantage: unlike most of the best Scottish country hotels, it is far from far flung – Edinburgh is just 20 miles away. 

There’s one other Scottish country hotel, the daddy of them all, that deserves a special mention for the way it too embraces both the traditional and the contemporary. Gleneagles, under the ownership of Sharan Pashrika and the directorship of Conor O’Leary, is now rightly known as the Glorious Playground. And it does a fine job, not least in the splendid Strathearn, one of the great restaurants of Europe, of giving many modern-day guests a wonderful experience in a very Scottish setting.

BOOK IT

• Rooms at the Fife Arms start at £250 per night. thefifearms.com
• Rooms at the Torridon start at £235 per night. thetorridon.com
• Rooms at Glenapp Castle start at £415 per night. glenappcastle.com
• Rooms at Fortingall start at £270 per night. fortingall.com
• Rooms at Three Chimneys start at £275 per night. threechimneys.co.uk
• Rooms at the Pierhouse start at £155 per night. pierhousehotel.co.uk
• Rooms at Glenmorangie House start at £422 per night. theglenmorangiehouse.com
• Rooms at Ardbeg House start at £225 per night. ardbeghouse.com
• Rooms at Lundies House start from £494 per night. lundies.scot 
• Penicuik House, sleeping 32, starts from £9.750 per night. penicuikestate.com
• Rooms at Gleneagles start from £650 per night. gleneagles.com