Her heart is in the Highlands

There is real passion in the book Ardkinglas – the biography of a Highland estate by Christina Noble. The author clearly loves Cairndow, its people and Ardkinglas Estate.

Ardkinglas is a 45,000-acre estate around Cairndow, a beautiful area of the Highlands at the head of Loch Fyne.

Sir Andrew Noble, the Christina Noble’s great-grandfather, bought the estate in 1905 and his family have run it ever since.

The estate has become famous throughout Scotland and beyond for the Loch Fyne Oyster Bar, founded by Christina’s brother, Johnny. This book is not just about the Nobles but the community Ardkinglas has become, the people who make it and have made it, and the story of how they have lived and worked.

This is not a nostalgic memoir of the Noble family, a Downton Abbey saga of life in ‘The Big House’. Rather, Christina Noble’s aim is to try to capture the feeling of what it was like for all of the community, employers and employees, to live on a classic Highland estate during the 20th century.

It is a vivid tale, built up from letters and household diaries covering some periods and estate journals covering others. More recent decades are coloured by the personal memories of the author and many others who lived there, whose voices have been carefully recorded for this book.

Ardkinglas: The Biography of a Highland Estate is illustrated throughout with pictures of the people who called Ardkinglas home, the places they knew and the activities which occupied them.

As their stories are told, some key questions emerge. A Highland estate in the modern world: what is it for? What keeps it going? Who gets the benefit?

Published in July 2018 by Birlinn, Ardkinglas: The Biography of a Highland Estate can be purchased at the Argyll Book Centre in Lochgilphead or from the Here We Are centre next to Loch Fyne Oysters.

The volume is also available as an eBook.