World-class golfing hotel to open on remote island
● Jura House, with estate facilities, is available for £20,000 a night
An australian millionaire is to open one of the world’s most exclusive golfing hotels on the remote Hebridean island where George Orwell wrote his dystopian best-seller 1984.
Ardfin Estate, on Jura, was bought for £3.5 million in 2010 by Greg Coffey, who has since spent an estimated £50m renovating Jura House and farm buildings into luxury accommodation.
Nicknamed the Wizard of Oz, after making a reputed £430m as a young city hedge fund trader, Mr Coffey has also spent around £20m creating an 18-hole golf course, on Jura’s rugged terrain.
Now Ardfin is set to welcome its first paying guests in April with Jura House, complete with golfing and other estate facilities, available for £20,000 a night, while a two-bedroom apartment in the old farm buildings, now known as The Quadrangle, will cost more than £5,000 a night.
The big house has been decked out in historic Scottish country house style by London-based interior designer Louise Jones. With no expense spared on its redesign, Jura House is now as far removed as it is possible to get from Barnhill, the basic farmhouse, four miles from the nearest road, where Orwell once stayed.
The attributes of the new hotel are featured in the latest edition of an upmarket travel magazine and an islander, who has seen the renovated house, said: “It’s £20,000 for the house, for one night, but the house is stunning, absolutely mind-blowing, it’s beyond description, you would be forgiven for thinking a family had lived there for 600 years.
“The house has actually tripled in size – and it was already a big mansion. The swimming pool is bigger than Jura Church and they have converted all the farm buildings into luxury apartments, all very individual and unique, there are no two things the same, no expense has been spared. There is a bar and a dining area you go to for your meals, they are not self-catering.”
A total of 85 workers, almost half the island’s 190 population, were drafted in to completethe ambitious Ardfin Estate projects.the golf course has been forged out along the cliff tops of Ardfin Estate, with rough peat land dug out and replaced with imported soil and specialist grass brought in from Yorkshire for the greens.