Distilled to absolute perfection

A house with a long whisky history produced a heady feeling, says

When Deborah harding spotted Distillery house featured in this very paper (indeed, in this very section of this paper) six years ago, it was love at f irst sight. Deborah’s husband, Gavin, who was working away at the time, recalls receiving a text from his wife that read “I’m in love”, and she was referring to this very appealinglooking B listed Georgian house on Grange Road in Burntisland in Fife.

The couple viewed the property that weekend, noted interest on the Monday, and made an offer the following Friday. It all happened fast, which might not seem so unusual – this was in the heady pre-recession days after all – but the hardings hadn’t been looking to move at the time. Someone had approached them expressing interest in their previous house if it ever went on the market, but still, moving to Distillery house hadn’t exactly been planned.

So why this house? As Gavin says: “The views to Binn hill behind the house are spectacular; it’s a magical location because of that. And there’s the history of the house; it has such a lot of character.”

Distillery house is believed to date from the late 1700s and was the former manager’s accommodation for the adjacent Grange Distillery, which was established in 1876 when the local Young family converted a brewery that had been built here in 1767.

It’s said that the Grange Distillery was producing around 900,000 litres of malt annually by the late 1800s, and in 1914 it became one of the five founder members of Scottish Malt Distillers Limited.

Although the distillery closed in 1925 (as part of the fallout from American prohibition), its warehouses remained in use until the 1980s, after which the roofs were removed from most of the buildings, leaving only the house intact.

By the time the previous owners to the hardings arrived here in the early 1990s the house was in a terrible state. no-one had lived in it for decades. Some rooms didn’t have ceilings or floors. “I remember the previous owners telling us how the cellar was like a slurry pit,” Gavin says.

It was a mess, but, thankfully, a mess where many of the original Georgian features had somehow survived – albeit in need of restoration.

The previous owners spent years transforming the house and deserve great credit for the painstaking work they poured into creating this interior; for example, when making some of the working shutters, which the owner did himself, when the originals were too badly damaged to repair.

Distillery house is a substantial property. Arranged over four levels – lower ground, ground, f irst and second floors – as it is today the house has five bedrooms, but there is easily scope for more. The hardings use an additional bedroom on the f irst floor as a dressing room, while they converted two bedrooms on the upper level to form an open plan living room and kitchen, making this upper level into a selfcontained two-bedroom f lat for their daughter, who has since left home.

This house could have seven or eight bedrooms if the next owner had the need for extra accommodation.

Other than the alterations on the upper level, the hardings have had few changes to make other than reconsidering floor coverings and the décor.

The double height dining-kitchenfamily room is an obvious highlight. This area is an extension to the side of the house, and originally this space would have had an additional floor level where the cook slept. The previous owners had to basically rebuild this section from scratch (there was only one wall standing when they moved here) and decided to open up the roof space, creating a tremendous sense of volume.

With its rustic slate floor, painted timber cabinets and island, and Aga, this large living area really is the proverbial heart of the hardings’ home.

But there is plenty more on offer; there’s also a separate dining room on the ground floor, with a butler’s pantry off it, while the drawing room and snug sitting room/library on the other side of the hallway have large double doors opening between the two spaces, making for a flexible and social space.

The finely detailed fireplace in the drawing room is combined with a wood-burning stove, and clearly this whole floor level is great for entertaining – the couple held a joint birthday party here two years ago with 130 guests, and the house absorbed them all comfortably.

And there are quirky period features: a door in the dining room opens to reveal the original safe (“It has the most spectacular key,” Gavin says), while downstairs in the snooker room you’ll find the original distillery sign mounted on one wall.

This is, as Gavin says, a hugely characterful house.

The views to Binn Hill behind the house are spectacular