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.: Publication date 12-Sep-2004 :: Reads: 8870 ::  ::  :. |
Thanks to Both Fhleisginn for supplying this, the earliest known description of the House:
On the eve of St. Andrew was completely finished, with masonic honours, the Cottage of Boleskin, erected by the Hon. A Fraser of Lovat, oÂn the side of, and embracing the view of Loch Ness, a piece of water 24 miles long, and between 2 and 3 miles broad. Its termination oÂn the left is the water and remarkable cascade of Foyers; and its front the countries of Glenmoriston and Urquhart, with their ancient Castles; oÂn its right Marshal Wade’s Hut, with the passage Faragig, and the stupendous glass fort, and signal hill D’un-d’arthulla, with its rocky woodland scenery, equally romantic, but less terrific than Glencoe. Here the new road of Inverfarragig opens, through weeping Birches, and coppices of Oak, Holly, and mountain Ash, to the hunting country of Stratherick, facing southwards; bounded oÂn the east by the Charr-lake of Ruthven, and oÂn the west by that of Tarff; the centre of Stratherick opens oÂn the evergreen meadow pastures of the forests of Killin, bounded due west by Culachy. Grazings, oÂn whose brows modern Barouche can be driven to a position whence the Western and Eastern Ocean are clearly seen every fine summer’s eve.
The Boleskin Cottage, with its double green houses, facing the rising and the setting sun, its Meranda, whose principal apartment is of forty feet long, embraces more of the simplex munditiæ in the midst of majestic scenery than perhaps any spot in Europe; the body of the Mansion is built of solid silver tissued Granite, and its proportions are pure Grecian Ionic. The wings and offices are of Saxon frame work, white as driven snow; the whole building by a projecting roof of azure Ballachulish slates, harmonizing with the Lake below the Sky above it; and here the snow never lies one day, so that herds of cattle ornament the grounds, at open pasture, in the dead of winter.
(Anon., ‘Cottage of Boleskin’, Inverness Journal (01 Dec., 1809), 3.)
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in 11° 
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in 10° 
: Anno IVxvi 
