A long and winding road to the Mull of Kintyre
GREAT ESTATES A soggy folk festival led Ann and Ian Darby to a remote Scottish stately home, writes Marianna Hunt
Folk music and torrential Scottish showers proved a fateful combination for Ann and Ian Darby one summer 21 years ago. The typically unseasonal weather forced the couple to up sticks from their usual camping spot at Tarbert Music Festival in Argyll, seeking refuge in the nearby Balinakill Country House, run as a hotel at the time. Ten years later when it came on to the market, the Darbys had not forgotten the Victorian estate on Scotland’s wild west coast, and decided to make their one-time shelter their home.
“We just couldn’t handle squelching about in the mud for another year,” says Ann. “Balinakill was a very luxurious change and we fell in love with it.” She and her husband still regularly attend the folk festival, only now they do so from the comfort of their own mansion.
“That was before the recession,” adds Ann, who used to be a social worker. “After that we quickly realised that we couldn’t afford to run it as a home, so we decided to turn Balinakill into a family business.” The couple spend half the year at their stately home on the Kintyre Peninsula and the other half in Glasgow, when they rent out the countryside
property through Airbnb. “The furniture from when the house had been a hotel hadn’t done it justice at all,” Ann grimaces. Together with Ian, an architect, she stripped off flowery wallpapers, threw out furniture, and restored the place to its 19th-century splendour. The couple also chose to move the “ugly old car park” outside the entrance, replacing it with a grand stone fountain.
The house now sleeps up to 30 guests and has 12 en-suite bedrooms. The jewel in Balinakill’s crown is the “wee bar”, decorated with stags’ heads and butcher-shop tiles – a nod to the room’s former identity as a store for hanging freshly caught game from the estate. A broken snooker table provided the material for the bar, behind which is a cast iron safe where the family’s best whiskies are hidden. “There are pipes for real ale too, and we take a keg up every time we stay,” adds Ann.
With large visiting groups and the Darbys’ own family aged from zero to 80, the house has seen some parties. “The conservatory is perfect for entertaining,” says Ann. “We host ceilidhs, yoga workshops, you name it.” In its 20 or so rooms Balinakill has just one television (“If it was up to me we wouldn’t have one at all”), the family preferring long, brisk walks through the hilly moorland or day trips to nearby islands. “We warn guests beforehand to give up any hope of good mobile reception,” she says.
The area holds very fond memories for both of the Darbys: Ann grew up in Argyll and Ian spent his childhood summers sailing the surrounding waters. The heather-clad peninsula shot to fame when Paul McCartney bought a farm there in 1968. A year later he was living there with his first wife Linda. The jutting headland in the North Atlantic provided the inspiration for one of the Beatles’ last ever songs to be released, The Long and Winding Road as well as McCartney’s 1977 hit with his band Wings, Mull Of Kintyre.
“I heard [McCartney’s daughter] Stella mention her fondness for Kintyre when she was interviewed on
Desert Island Discs recently,” says Darby. “There’s a memorial garden to Linda in Campbeltown, further down the peninsula, and the McCartneys still own the farm.”
The Darbys’ own Kintyre escape was built by Sir William MacKinnon, 1st Baronet of Strathaird and Loup, who purchased the estate in 1867. The house was constructed from quarried stone, shipped to a loch in nearby Tarbert before being hauled from the shore by a horse-drawn railway.
MacKinnon was a Scottish shipowner who established the BritishIndia Steam Navigation Company and trade routes from Burma to the Persian Gulf and Zanzibar. He sponsored the expeditions of explorer Henry Morton Stanley and was a close acquaintance of King Leopold II of Belgium, who made a trip to Balinakill. Preparations for a visit from Queen Victoria had to be halted when Sir William died in 1893.
During the Blitz, pupils from Keil School were evacuated from Dumbarton on the River Clyde and the school was moved to Balinakill House, where it remained until the end of the war.
In 2013, the house hosted a reunion of former evacuee students. “We have some iron beds from the old dormitories in the attic, and you can still read some of the things the school boys graffitied on the house’s parapets,” says Ann.
Balinakill, which is surrounded by seven acres of gardens, wears its history proudly. Rooms have original oak panels and are embellished with elaborate cornicing, while huge Victorian fireplaces keep guests toasty. Then there’s the wooden canopy bath which, she adds proudly, the Queen is said to own an identical version of in Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh.
But her favourite part of her home is the adventure of actually getting there in the first place. “Guests can arrive by seaplane, by ferry or by a stunning but tortuous road along the shores of Loch Lomond,” she says. “You drive through the glen, before climbing along a famous mountain pass called ‘Rest and be Thankful’.”
The best part of the house is the adventure of actually getting there in the first place