Romance realised Ardfin estate, Isle of Jura, Argyll and Bute, part I

A Victorian shooting lodge has been stylishly recast as the heart of a modern estate. In the first of two articles, Clive Aslet reports on this remarkable project

-  Clive Aslet

IF you were to be magically transported to the rocky southern tip of Jura in the Inner Hebrides, you would find yourself at Ardfin. There is a beach of grey sand and, when you have scrambled up the rocks, the path ascends steeply through bluebells and wild garlic, primroses and campions, between the gaunt, wind-sculpted branches of lichen-encrusted trees. At the top, you emerge onto a lawn, part of it used as a cricket pitch, occasionally shared— despite the best endeavours of those responsible for fencing the property—with red deer. Here is Jura House (Fig 1), once a modest Victorian shooting lodge, now a fully equipped country house, the style of which reflects that of the Baronial Revival of the original.

Jura House is the nerve-centre of the 14,000-acre Ardfin estate, site of the former home of the Campbell lairds who ruled the Isle of Jura from the 17th century. In 1772, the Campbell of the day entertained the amiable Welsh naturalist Thomas Pennant as he travelled through the area to research his book A Tour of the Hebrides (1774). Intending to land on Islay, he and his companions found themselves becalmed, then driven north; a bump at 1am, when their boat’s hull scraped the sea floor, alerted them to their arrival off Jura. Presumably, it was the impoverished fisherwomen, collecting their ‘wretched fare, limpets and periwinkles’, who told Mr Campbell, because he obligingly sent horses for the travellers.