ABOUT · LARCHFIELD
A farm that stopped farming quite so hard.
Larchfield has been in the same family since 1911. It ran sheep for eighty years, then rather fewer sheep, and in 2019 we put the first structure up on the rise above the tarn to see whether anyone would come.
IN THE FAMILY SINCE
1911
ACRES
90
UNITS
6
PEOPLE WHO WORK HERE
5
THE LAND
Ninety acres, and what we decided not to do with them.
We built six, and stopped
The first plan had eleven units on it. We built two, lived with them for a season, and took the plan apart. Eleven would have meant a reception, a car park you could see from the hill, and the particular deadness that arrives when a place starts running to a rota.
Six is the number at which everyone can have a door nobody else walks past, and at which we can still lay every fire ourselves by four in the afternoon.
Everything sits where the ground told it to
No unit was sited on a plan. Each one was pegged out on the hill over a winter, moved twice, and only poured when the view out of the door was the one we wanted and the walk in from the car was honest.
That is why the Eyrie is eighteen minutes uphill and why we have never pretended otherwise. It is also why nothing here faces anything else.
It is still a working estate
There are sheep, there is stalking in season, and there is a great deal of fixing. You will meet a quad bike on the track and a man with a chainsaw in the wood, and both of them will say hello.
We think that is better than the alternative, which is a landscape arranged for photographs.
WHO YOU WILL MEET
Five people, and a dog who thinks she works here.
FIONA ROSS
ESTATE MANAGER
Grew up here, left for fifteen years to do something sensible in Edinburgh, came back in 2016. Runs the bookings, writes most of the journal, and will tell you honestly that February is not the month you want.
IAIN ROSS
EVERYTHING ELSE
Fiona’s father. Put up the first two units with a joiner from Appin and re-roofed the bothy over one winter. If something here is well made, he made it; if it is badly made, he will already have told you.
CALLUM BAIN
STALKER
Twenty-two years on this ground and the neighbouring estate. Takes people up for the rut, knows where the eagles are nesting, and is the reason we ask you to keep dogs on the lead past the low field.
MAIRI & TOM
HOUSEKEEPING & KITCHEN
Between them they lay the fires, fill the baskets, leave the breakfast boxes and cook the farmhouse dinner on the nights it is ordered. Mairi’s bread is the thing people write about in the logbooks.
BRAMBLE
UNOFFICIAL
A collie of poor discipline and strong opinions who will escort you to your unit whether or not you would like her to. She does not go inside. She will try.
Come and be shown round.
Someone will walk you up, whichever door you have booked.