Sweet home in final of TV contest
Eco-friendly cottage wows judges
A South Lanarkshire home has made it through to the final of Scotland’s Home of the Year.
An eco-friendly cottage, near Biggar, impressed the judges on this week’s popular BBC Scotland programme and has landed a place in the final at Glasgow’s House for an Art Lover.
TV judges Anna Campbell Jones, Michael Angus and Kate Spiers chose the cottage as their favourite in the Glasgow and the Clyde Valley category over a converted apartment in Dalzell House, Motherwell, and a stunning renovated villa in the southside of Glasgow.
Despite all three spectacular homes vowing the judges, and scoring high, it was Pentland View in Elsrickle, owned by Rachel Cohen that scooped first place.
Judges loved how the home seemed to “get better” as they moved about the spaces showing off its “rich history.”
And described it as having a “marriage of old and new in a contemporary space.”
Rachel shares her family’s experience of retrofitting a traditional Scottish building and living in an ecohome, to show that it can be light, bright, airy and modern without any sacrifices on design or comfort as well as economical to run.
She previously told the Advertiser: “We feel particularly lucky to have been able to build our dream home and to have been in this rural environment with access to so much green space throughout lockdown.
“I fell in love with our home when we first saw it because it’s almost identical to my grandparents’ old croft house in the Outer Hebrides.
“The house was derelict and had been empty for 30 plus years.
“But we were clear from the start we didn’t want to demolish it (even though it would have been much more economical), because although there’s nothing unique about it – as a standard agricultural labourer’s cottage – it is a part of the Scottish rural landscape and architectural vocabulary and we value that.
“We worked hard to ensure the house has no carbon inputs. It is heavily insulated and we have solar panels, batteries and a heat pump powered by renewable electricity.
“Our car runs almost entirely from solar power in the summer.”
Next week will see the finalist from the West being judged in episode eight, which will feature the stunning Craigend Farm.
Kate and Kenny Walker live in the converted farmhouse on the outskirts of East Kilbride with their three children Alex, Jack and Frankie.
This episode will be shown on the BBC Scotland channel on Monday, May 23, at 8.30pm.
Homeowners are being urged to apply now for the fifth series of the competition, with details of how to enter available online.
It’s almost identical to my grandparents’ croft in the Outer Hebrides