T


he Edwards had been holidaying in Cove in Wester Ross with their small children for about 10 years when the opportunity arose


to create a more permanent base. “We fell in love with the area,” Theresa recalls. “Eventually we thought, what if we could have something up here to escape from our busy business life and create a legacy for the children?”


The family knew the locals well and when one of them decided to split up his croft, they asked if he would consider selling them part of it. He said yes and in 2010 the couple took ownership of a plot of land overlooking Loch Ewe. Initially there was no planning permission and not even a road to the plot but over time, plans were put in place for a conventional timber frame dwelling. “It had taken a long time to get that permission as the planning department were quite fussy about what could go up in the area and quite rightly so,” Mark explains. During this time, through their work with their business, Strathearn Stone & Timber, the couple encountered architect Stuart Bagshaw. “We were on a job in Harris and the builder said that the architect would like to speak to us as he was interested in what we were doing,” Mark remembers. “We met with Stuart and his signature build was everything we wanted but couldn’t put into words.” After a phone call to planning, the plans for the current build were scrapped. “We said we wanted to build a Stuart Bagshaw house. The planners knew of Stuart, and they said if we were building one of his designs, we wouldn’t have any problems with permissions, and they were right.” Stuart’s design of Black Sheep House was one of Mark’s favourites, but the couple were aware that this design wouldn’t be large enough for them and their family. “I think because I


18


had seen Black Sheep being developed, it was my idea of the perfect bothy; something small where you could hunker down in wild weather.” “Mark wanted a small house like Black Sheep but of course that wouldn’t have worked for family living,” Stuart recalls. However, regardless of the sie of the property Stuart affi rms that his design process always starts in the same way. “Where is north? Where does the sun rise and where does the sun set? Then I look at how the sun will move during the day, the prevailing winds. After that you can site the rooms around where you get the views and where you get the sunlight.” And that’s exactly what Stuart did here.


Once the rooms are sited, Stuart starts to consider volume as he explains: “My own house is an old croft house, but it still has double height spaces which always surprises people. Volume is important, I liken it to when people lived in caves; creating different volumes creates different atmospheres.” The other thing that all Stuart’s designs have in common is the absence of CAD: “I draw everything by hand on tracing paper and then layer up the tracing paper.” That’s not to say that Stuart isn’t familiar with CAD. “I did learn to use CAD but it didn’t work for me and there are certain things that CAD will just not let you do or add into the design.”


Even without the assistance of computers, the design evolved quickly, Stuart remembers: “We swapped a few rooms, and the boat house wasn’t in the original brief but once that was fi rmed up, ark was really involved and hands on and he came to me for technical info and spatial details.”


“What Stuart designed here was right,” says Mark. “The only changes we made were to make


LOW POINTS


“One winter we had a leak, and it was before we had put the internal linings on – it was soul destroying. There was nothing obviously wrong and it took a long time to work out what had happened.” – Theresa


“It was a simple error in the roof drainage. We’d puddled the soil on the roof when we were walking on it and instead of it draining it was overfl owing. owever, it took a long time to work that out!” – Mark


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