The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
The Cupar hotel that’s become a family home.
A former hotel – where Clint Eastwood once drank – in the heart of Cupar has been converted into a charming home that has all the space a family could need. Jack Mckeown takes a look inside Eden House
It is hard to know who’s going to miss Eden House more, its owner Alice Simpson or her friends. “Before lockdown my friends would drop by for coffee all the time,” she smiles. “I’m right in the middle of Cupar here and they wouldn’t bother phoning, they’d just turn up at the door.” With six bedrooms, and the potential to create up to nine, Alice was also in demand to host dinner parties. “It’s a fantastic house for entertaining. I can have friends over from the west coast and they can all have their own bedrooms.”
It’s little wonder Eden House is an exceptionally spacious home – it used to be a prominent hotel in the Fife town.
Alice and her former husband bought at a property auction in 2012 and spent six months renovating it into a family home.
“It had been on the market for ages and we managed to pick it up at auction,” she explains.
“It had suffered a bit of flooding but the damage was only in the kitchen and one of the bedrooms, so it wasn’t difficult to put right.
“It was pretty straightforward to transform it back into a house again.”
Alice rescued as many of the original features as possible and removed some of the less attractive aspects from its former life as a hotel.
“We didn’t need every bedroom to have an en suite,” she continues.
“They were just partitioned off boxes that didn’t have any windows and detracted from the room, so we got rid of those.”
Dating from 1876, the former hotel’s main access is a huge original timber door with a stone archway over, leading into a tiled vestibule.
That rarely gets used, though, and people come and go using the glazed doors into the kitchen, which is the heart of the home and is warmed by a large green gas Aga.
“I couldn’t imagine cooking in a normal oven any more,” Alice laughs.
“I’ve had an Aga in almost every home I’ve lived in – including a top-floor flat in Cupar’s old bank building.”
Alice knocked through an adjoining wall into what used to be the hotel’s bar area to create a large open plan kitchen/living room.
“What’s lovely about the heritage of this house is the number of people who remember it when it was a hotel,” she says.
“I get people coming up telling me they used to stand where my living room is now,
having a drink at the bar, or that they were at a wedding here.”
Indeed, what is now Alice’s living room has had its share of famous customers.
Alice says: “When I was a young girl in my early 20s, I worked at the Royal Hotel in Cupar when the Open was in St Andrews.
“We heard a rumour Clint Eastwood was at Eden House so we raced round and peeped in through the windows – and there he was, sitting at a table having a drink.”
The open plan kitchen/living room is where Alice spends most of her time. With its huge bay window, wooden flooring and comfortable furniture, it’s a very pleasant and light-filled place to be.
There’s also a formal lounge on the ground floor, along with a cosy snug, a gym, utility room and WC.
Alice converted one of the first-floor bedrooms into an enormous family bathroom. There are five bedrooms on the first floor, with the master bedroom having its own WC.
On the attic level are four more rooms, two of which are used as bedrooms, while one is a home office and the other an additional living room.
There really is no end of space. “Sometimes, if I’m changing my bed linen and the sheets aren’t dry, I just sleep in another bedroom,” Alice jokes.
“One of my sons and his wife lived here while they were renovating their home. They had their own bedroom and each had a room to work from home. It’s nice having lots of space and being able to share it.”
Eden House faces on to Cupar’s Haugh Park, giving it a lovely outlook, and has views to the Fife hills from its upper levels. There’s a double garage and a large parking area, along with a covered patio, decking, and expanse of lawn. “I’m not much of a gardener,” Alice admits, “so it’s just as well it’s an easy garden to look after.”
The hotel also came with a charming little one-bedroom lodge house that sits in a corner of the garden, well screened from the main house.
The lodge is rented out and Alice is not including it in the sale, although it may be open to negotiation.
“If we sold the lodge with the house it would push the price up above what a lot of people are willing to pay,” she says.
“If whoever I sell the house to wants to buy the lodge at some point down the line, I’d be willing to come to an agreement with them.”
Divorced for several years, Alice, 57, has focused much of her time on providing child care for her granddaughter.
With her own children grown up and her granddaughter starting school later this year, she feels now is the time to downsize.
“I’ve absolutely loved this place and have some great memories,” she says.
“All my friends I host parties for keep telling me I mustn’t sell it, but it really is far too big for me.
“Covid has made me reassess my life a bit. “When we’ve all had the vaccine and things get a bit more normal, I plan to do some travelling – I really want to explore India.
“I wouldn’t feel right locking up this big place and leaving it for months at a stretch, so I’m looking for a three-bedroom cottage in Cupar or in the countryside nearby for my next home.”
Eden House, Pitscottie Road, Cupar, is on sale with Lawrie Estate Agents for offers over £495,000.