“With Brown & Brown’s help, we’ve achieved exactly what we wanted, inside and out” – Siobhan


Andrew explains: “We came up with a couple of options focusing on how we could make the most of the location.” The River Don is below and there’s a valley to the south and a valley to the east. “The valley to the south gets really good light but it gets a lot of weather. Indeed, we had four months of snow and at one point during the build we were dealing with 1.6 m of it! Our contractors, Crombie, were brilliant, but they really had their work cut out for them.” Where the original cottage had once stood was the most sheltered point from the weather and respected the views from the glen below, and it was also the most accessible even if it was not easily accessible. Asides from access there was also the issue of how the house would fit into and complement the surrounding countryside. “We didn’t put it on a pitch because a straight line on the landscape was slightly more incongruous. We came from the idea of creating a new little hillock and when you see it from the glen, it appears layered.” She adds: “It’s not bashful, it’s not a building that


may/jun 2023


hides, but it doesn’t stand out either.” Clad in black painted larch, the property visually ‘loses itself’ in the hill, and more so in the winter when the hillside is naturally darker. Adding a turf roof which was sown from the grass on the adjacent hill also assisted in bedding the property into the landscape and helped its insulation properties too. “We completely over-insulated the roof, but then it also has turf and soil and that doesn’t feature in the thermal calculations. The roof was already performing highly but once you laid the soil and turf, that improved it even further.” Brown & Brown were also keen to over-insulate


the roof because the site access restrictions now meant that the timber frame would have to be smaller than what they would normally specify. The location made getting materials to site difficult and many were taken up on a trailer behind a pick up. The windows were delivered by the local farmer on his tractor and trailer. “We had to use a slightly smaller timber frame which we could transport more easily although


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