Guisachan House Pt II

Guisachan House

A long abandoned Victorian mansion

Part II

Edward Marjoribanks inherited the title and the estate on the death of his father in 1894.   Much had been achieved in transforming the estate in the forty years since his father purchased it.  Unfortunately, it would soon be in decline.

Edward too was a politician, eventually becoming First Lord of the Admiralty.  He had married Fanny Spencer-Churchill in 1873 and together they carried on the tradition of entertaining the great and the good. However, following Fanny’s death aged 51, in 1904 he appeared to lose interest in Guisachan.  This, together with growing financial problems resulting from the collapse of the Meux Brewery, resulted in the sale of the Wedgwood collection to Lord Leverhulme in 1905 and the estate to Lord Portsmouth 1908 a year before his own death.

The Portsmouth family owned the estate until 1935 during which time it was used by family and sometimes rented out to sporting tenants.  Unlike his predecessors, Portsmouth never invested the sums needed to maintain Guisachan House to the high standards of its heyday and over the years both the house and estate began to deteriorate.  Portsmouth died in 1917 and two years later his widow put the estate on the market, but it failed to attract a single bid at auction.

Eventually, in 1935 the estate was purchased by Mr Hunter, lawyer for Lady Aberdeen.  She was formerly Isabel Marjoribanks, daughter of the 1st Lord Tweedmouth.  She had always retained a soft spot for the old family home and was concerned for the future of Guisachan House.  Through her influence Guisachan House was rented out to the Northern Regional Committee of the National Fitness Campaign in 1938.  It was hoped that this would be a long-term arrangement but with the threat of war looming the plans were shelved.  In any case the fitness campaigners had upset the owner of nearby Hilton Lodge, Lady Islington, who had earlier purchased part of the estate.  She was not enamoured by the activities taking place and in particular naked men and women swimming in Hilton Loch!

Auction Catalogue 1919

In early 1939 Lady Islington bought Guisachan House for £1500.  Her intentions to make it uninhabitable were clear from the outset leading to a public outcry.  The entire contents of Guisachan House were stripped out and sold at auction and the roof removed.  The image above is the first in a thirty-two-page catalogue produced by the auctioneers which listed every item of stone, marble, wood flooring; anything that could be removed was removed. 

The building was left to decay for almost eighty years becoming unstable and dangerous due to the ingress of trees and other vegetation resulting in collapse of parts of the structure.  In 2018 work was begun to remove the trees and stabilise the ruin.

Scotsman 10th March 1939
Scotsman 2nd May 1939

Work began in November 2018 to remove the dense vegetation, including some substantial trees, from around and within the structure.  In some cases large branches were actually supporting parts of the building.  Several chimney stacks were removed for safety reasons as they were in danger of collapse with nothing supporting them.  Additional supports were fixed into some of the window frames.

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Photos taken just prior to and during the clearance work showing the extent of decay in the building and how eighty years of neglect allowed shrubs and trees to take over the site.  Images courtesy of Pam & Richard Soper.

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