Shopping Rightmove for a rural bolthole? Get ‘the perfect of the Highlands’ for £9m

[ad_1] I f you’re spending a drizzly weekend indoors scrolling for the one-day countryside bolthole you’ll most likely by no means purchase, one thing within the Highlands of Scotland may catch your eye within the Rightmove listings.

Simply north of Fort William, the place the typical property worth is a shade over £200,000, is a sale itemizing for £9m – however that is no lochside bothy ripe for renovation.

As an alternative, the Glen Buck property features a four-bed farmhouse, two-bed vacation cottage, hydroelectric scheme, 3,600 hectares (8,900 acres) of land and a part of the close by loch.

There are prospects to make more cash from its rolling hills within the shadow of the Grampian mountains too, the constant wind speeds of the realm generally known as the “electrical glen” making it prime for wind generators.

The itemizing comes amid unhappiness from Highlanders who imagine massive swathes of land being purchased by rich people inflates property costs and excludes native individuals from shopping for the place they grew up.

In line with authorities statistics, the rise in home costs within the Highlands is among the many highest in Scotland, with a 7% improve between July 2023 and July 2024.

In 2022 the Scottish Land Fee warned the nation’s land market is vulnerable to “overheating”, with the demand from companies, charities and the privately rich for prime Highland estates outstripping provide.

Rod Christie, who's dealing with the sale on behalf of Galbraith property brokers, mentioned: “On the coronary heart of the Nice Glen, Glen Buck property affords consumers huge variety via a wealth of residential, sporting, pure capital and renewable pursuits.

“It's going to possible attraction to consumers from throughout the globe, with non-public consumers, establishments and buyers all capable of finding a selected focal point.”

The farmhouse and buildings of the property. {Photograph}: Galbraith/PA The property in Aberchalder is wealthy in historical past too, carefully related to Scotland’s bloody clan previous and the Jacobite revolt.

The close by village of Invergarry was as soon as residence to a department of Clan Donald. Approaching Glen Buck alongside the A82 earlier than Invergarry, drivers come throughout a macabre monument devoted to a sequence of Seventeenth-century reprisal killings among the many clans.

The obelisk subsequent to Loch Oich is initially unassuming. Nevertheless, nearer scrutiny reveals it's topped with a carving of a hand holding a dagger, and 7 severed heads.

Referred to as the Properly of the Seven Heads, the identify refers to revenge killings after two members of Clan MacDonald of Keppoch, a department of Clan Donald, have been murdered by their cousins.

The seven killers have been tracked down two years later and themselves killed. They have been decapitated, with their heads washed in a properly beneath the place the obelisk now stands. Their heads have been then introduced as proof of their deaths. The properly can nonetheless be seen.

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The realm has sturdy hyperlinks, too, to the Jacobite revolt. Regiments from the realm joined the Jacobite military that tried to revive the Home of Stuart to the British throne.

The close by village of Fort Augustus was the scene of a siege in the course of the rebellion of 1745, and once more a yr later, as the realm was contested between Jacobite forces and people loyal to the British crown.

Fortunately, it has been way more peaceable since then. Glen Buck fronts on to the Caledonian canal, which connects the east and west Scottish coasts.

It covers low-lying floor, upland terrain and hill grazing to greater than 800 metres at Carn Dearg, and contains native woodland in addition to buildings together with a farmhouse, bothies and a cottage used for vacation lets.

The leased Glen Buck Hydro Scheme is an electrical energy era facility on the property that can present rental revenue till 2065.

The sellers additionally pointed to “pure capital alternatives” on the property within the type of peatland restoration potential, and woodland creation supported by “compensatory planting preparations”.

In the meantime its “sporting attraction” is represented by well-established deer stalking throughout open nation and areas of woodland, the sellers saying this might be additional developed.

Christie mentioned: “With excessive hills, historic woodland, open moorland and good-quality farmland, Glen Buck represents the perfect of the Highlands and enjoys entry to, and a spectacular outlook over, Loch Oich.”