The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
A steading remade in style
An 18th Century steading in Perthshire has been converted into a home and modernised with not one but two architectdesigned conservatory extensions. The result is a comfortable home with original features no modern property can match
“This house is like a Tardis,” Sally Orr Ewing explains when I arrive at Baiglie Courtyard.
Sat down a deserted lane a few miles outside Bridge of Earn, Baiglie Courtyard looks from the roadside like nothing more than a modest farm cottage. Explore further, however, and its sprawling grandeur quickly becomes apparent.
The C-shaped house was converted from a range of farm steadings around two years ago and Sally, her husband David and their four children have lived there for the past 11 years.
The main entrance opens into perhaps the home’s most magnificent room. Designed by Kinross specialists Mozolowski and Murray, the conservatory sits in a courtyard with the main house wrapping around.
It links to the recently upgraded farmhouse-style kitchen, which has a comfortable easy chair in one corner. “That old cliché about the kitchen being the heart of the home is true,” Sally smiles. “So we threw that chair in and whichever child is home usually flops in it while I make tea.”
The reception hall has a curved stone wall of impressive thickness. The wall houses a double-sided wood burner that blasts heat around the house during the winter months.
On the other side of wood burner and wall is the living room, a large space with exposed timber beams and windows built into the archways that were once the openings to the stable and cart shed.
Also off the hall is the second conservatory. Also built by Mozolowski and Murray, this one faces on to the side and rear gardens and is used as a dining room.
A long corridor has four double bedrooms and a bathroom off it. One of the bedrooms has the pipework in place for an en suite to be added.
A set of stairs leads up to the master bedroom, with a sizeable landing housing two big cupboards.
The bedroom itself occupies an expansive space and has a pair of windows in both wall and ceiling.
The en suite has “the best view of any bath I know of” out over the rolling Perthshire countryside.
Sally, 48, and David, 53, added the two conservatory extensions, the main one three years ago and the second one in 2015. They also installed double glazing in all of the windows.
Outside, there’s a parking area out front and a wrap-around garden to the side and back.
At the bottom of the garden is a patio and fire pit built by Sally’s eldest son, which has become a favourite spot to enjoy a beer or glass of wine on a summer evening.
With three of their four children having flown the coop, Sally says that the time has come to downsize.
“David was in the army for 29 years. He was with The Black Watch so we wanted to be in this area.
“He now works between Edinburgh and London, and I’m from Stockbridge, so we’re looking for somewhere in the city,” Sally says.
“We will miss this house enormously, though. There are so many happy memories here.”
The doublesided wood burner blasts heat around the house during the winter months