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On Sunday 15th of April (12 noon – 4.30pm), Winton House near Pencaitland throws its doors open for its annual Family Spring Open Day, with funds being raised for Maggie’s Centres, the Scottish cancer care charity, and Scotland’s Gardens.

A lamb in Winton's daffodils. Photo Tony Marsh

The Events Manager, Kerry McCabe, tells us what is planned for the Winton Open Day:

“For the first time we’re having a ‘Friends, family and farmers market’ with stalls for locally made arts, crafts, clothing, and, of course, plants. Visitors will be able to buy personalised children’s clothing, patchwork quilts, jewellery, etched glass and handmade cards.

“The mild weather means that the daffodils, crocuses and spring flowers will be out in force. There will be lots of entertainment for families: dog and duck herding; bouncy castles with slides; fancy ‘glitter’ face painting by Shirley Hamilton; and delicious homemade soup, sandwiches and cakes at Café Winton.

“Visitors will be able to go on guided historical tours of Winton House with its fine Scottish Renaissance ceilings, master pieces on the walls, and links to Mary Queen of Scots, Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Elgin Marbles.”

Entry to the garden and estate is £4 per adult and children are free. Guided House tours are £5 per person and £3 for concessions.

The arts, crafts and clothing displays will include Tigerlily Kids from Pencaitland who make personalised kids clothing, blankets, comforters, bags and T-shirts, decorated with elephants, names, trains or birds. Magghi Mclean’s Puffin Patchworks from Musselburgh will also be on display. She designs and hand stitches made-to-order patchwork quilts. Haddington-based Bands and Beads will be displaying their handbags and jewellery.  Lydia MacDonald will be showing off her hand crafted glass etchings of insects, animals and skylines. Carol Brackenridge from Musselburgh will be displaying her handmade cards and bunting.

Keen gardeners will be able to stock up on plants from Macplants, based in nearby Boggs Holdings. Macplants are one of central Scotland’s largest growers of herbaceous perennials, alpines, ferns and ornamental grasses, and grow on site their highly praised autumn gentians and meconopsis cultivars.

Picnics are welcome and visitors will enjoy walking through the walled and terraced gardens, which are five years into a major six year replanting plan. Most of the plants here are raised from seed and cuttings in the poly tunnel and glasshouse. Planting also generates cut flowers for functions in the House.

Head Gardener, Toby Subiotto, gives an update on the garden’s redevelopment:

“Both of the walled garden borders have been planted with a mix of herbaceous plants for impact and height, with shrubs following on from early spring bulbs. The walls have been planted with old fashioned roses, Jasmines, honeysuckles and tender wall shrubs. Salvias, sunflowers and squashes will provide interest later in summer.

“In the terraced garden, the middle terrace has recently been planted with old fashioned shrub roses, and, in time, will be complemented by plantings of campanulas, pinks, sweet williams and lavender. A dahlia border will be on display and providing interest in late summer up until November.

“An Iris and peony border is planned and starting to take shape along the edges in the lower terrace. The planting in shade at the far end has a more ‘woodland’ feel to blend into the area beyond the gate.

“As a result of a recent thinning of the Dell near the House, this woodland area has been opened up. The areas at each end will be planted with shrubs, with complementary planting along the edges. Fine ornamental tree collections of Japanese maples, flowering dogwoods, magnolia and witch hazels are being built up, many grown from small pots. Himalayan rowans, parrottia, nyssa, and euonymus will provide further autumn colour and interest, creating a middle canopy height in time.”

James & Tania on honeymoon in Banff after their Winton wedding

An interview with James and Tania Wood who had a traditional Scottish wedding at Winton House for 65 guests.

“Tania had family connections to the wider area around Winton, and we looked at a number of castle wedding venues. As soon as we walked in to Winton House, however, I don’t think there was any doubt in our minds: we knew this was such a beautiful and yet intimate venue that it captured what we were looking for perfectly for our autumn wedding.

“We had our closest family and friends with us on our wedding day, most of whom came from around Britain and Ireland, with a French contingent who stemmed from Tania’s parents’ decision to retire to France ten years ago.
 
“The format for the day was rather traditional: we were married at Pencaitland Parish Church, where we’d been attending Sunday service for over a year; Tania wore white and James wore a kilt; we had a 1950’s touring limousine as our wedding car, the wedding breakfast, then speeches and a ceilidh.

“Our wedding party plus their children stayed over at Winton until Sunday and we didn’t go on honeymoon until the Monday, which meant we were able to spend a little more time with everyone.”

What was the feedback from guests?

“’What a wonderful experience – a genuinely Scottish wedding!’, ‘We really enjoyed the reception, and we’ve been to a lot of them recently.’ ‘What a beautiful day’ – these are just a flavour of the many amazing comments we had about our wedding day, which only describe a portion of how brilliantly we think it went ourselves!

“Everyone in the team does everything they can to make sure your special day is exactly that: the most memorable day of your life. No detail was overlooked, and the team really seemed to care how the day went. For both of us, though it’s a cliché, it really was the most perfect and happiest of days – and a large part of that is thanks to the entire team at Winton.”

James & Tania with Winton House in the background

Is there anything that makes Winton House stand out?

“It’s hard to pick out one detail among so many: the stunning location; the wonderful décor and works of art; the well-appointed bedrooms and facilities for guests. But as the old adage would say, it’s the people that make a place, and if pressed I would say it’s the quality of what “Team Winton” give to their guests that make the experience so unforgettable. And that includes Francis’s skills with board games!”

Winton House with its remarkable Scottish Renaissance, carved, twisted chimneys

Can a masterpiece of Scottish Renaissance architecture accommodate a 21st-century family without bankrupting them? Sir Francis Ogilvy, owner of Winton House, is determined to try.

Words by Anna Burnside. This feature was published in Homes & Interiors Scotland in September 2011 and they have kindly given their consent for its publication here.

During the Ogilvy family’s recent summer holiday in France, they visited Disneyland, the Louvre and the Palace of Versailles. Pluto and Goofy passed unremarked but some of the paintings rang a bell. “In the Louvre we passed a Van Dyck and thought, that looks familiar,” says the head of the family. It was. It’s the partner of one that hangs in the front hall. Then another Dutch landscape mysteriously transported them back to East Lothian. Sure enough, it was a Jan van Goyen, similar to the one in the library. Sir Francis Ogilvy, the 14th Baronet of Inverquarity, has not lost his sense of wonder at these things. “In the Louvre. Wow.”

For Ogilvy, who grew up around Dutch Masters and waved to ancestral portraits while sliding down the banisters, it’s the juxtaposition that was a surprise. It was like seeing that well-washed Asda teatowel, complete with indelible curry stain, on display in the Conran Shop. For him, Van Dycks and Van Goyens – to say nothing of Raeburns and Canalettos – belong at home, not in an art gallery.

“WE WERE GOING TO INSTALL ORNATE IRON RADIATORS – BUT WHO LOOKS AT THE RADIATORS WHEN THERE ARE VAN DYCKS ON THE WALLS?”

As homes go, this one is pretty special. Ogilvy, his music teacher wife Dorothy and their four children live in Winton
House, a Grade-A listed building between Tranent and Pencaitland in East Lothian. With its extraordinary twisted chimneys and immaculately ornate plaster ceilings, it’s one of the best examples of Renaissance architecture in Scotland. It has been the Ogilvy family home for three generations and, under one of the most distinctive roofs in Scotland, life continues as normal.

The drawing room has one of the finest plaster ceilings and largest one-piece Indian carpet in Scotland

As normally as it possible to live in a house that eats money, that is. Ogilvy’s parents were driven out by dry rot when he was 12. An only child, he knew even then that the house would become an important part of his life, and when he moved back in, after his wedding16 years ago, the path was set. “I chose to study rural land management as I knew I wanted to be involved in the countryside. I trained as a surveyor, found a practice in East Lothian called Chalmers & Co and took it over 12 years ago.”

The newlyweds settled in a corner of the tower, which is still the heart of the family’s living quarters. (As the Baronet puts it with his disarming self-deprecating sense of humour, “We live in a first floor flat.”) While not exactly a Barratt starter home, it is on a more manageable scale than Winton’s grand public areas. Thanks to Elspeth, Hamish, Calum and Robert, who range in age from six to twelve, the kitchen is decorated with the kind of artwork that doesn’t demand a heavy gilt frame. There is even a vaguely ethnic metal sculpture from John Lewis. Outside in the stairwell, ancient grandees frown on rucksacks, a tiny lilac hairbrush and a Spongebob Squarepants comic, as if they disapprove of the flotsam and jetsam of 21st-century life.

Although the estate, with five farms producing oats, wheat, barley and cattle, helps to support the house, what Ogilvy calls “the fancy rooms” have to earn their keep. Winton itself is used for dinners, weddings, corporate team building training days and whatever 21st-century people want to do in a magnificent historical mansion, including just living in it for a few days. “My children have grown up trying to sleep with bagpipes playing outside their bedrooms,” he says.

“Two or three times a week I come home from work, put the kids to bed, put on my kilt and go out and meet 20 Austrians for the first time. I say to them, ‘This is my house all the time but for tonight it’s your house too.’ It pleases me to see it used and enjoyed.”

This has been his generation’s innovation. “Corporate hospitality was not a thing of the 1950s. It’s not straightforward to find a use for a 500-year-old house. This is one answer. The house may be used for something entirely different in the future. We want to ensure that it’s kept up to a certain standard and that it’s flexible, to allow different uses to come and go while maintaining the fabric and contents of the house. Besides, it’s far too big for one family to hoard. It was made for entertaining people.”

The original Winton House was built by the Seton family in 1150 and then torched by Henry VIII in a vain attempt to impress Mary Queen of Scots. If they hadn’t already got the message, the Setons backed the wrong side in the Jacobite rebellion of 1715. The Earl of Winton was taken to the Tower of London and Bonnie Prince Charlie commandeered the estate in 1745, setting up camp there.

When the Hamilton Nisbets bought Winton in 1779, it was not in its best shape. Happily, they brought the wealth of two of Scotland’s best established families with them to East Lothian and began filling the house with the finest furniture, carpets and paintings that Europe and the Ottoman empire could provide. As the house passed through the family – used mainly as a second home – it was enlarged and ‘modernised’. Woodlands were planted. One owner, Mary Nisbet, held a party for 800 to celebrate Queen Victoria’s jubilee.

The Ogilvys arrived in 1888, when advocate Henry Ogilvy married into the family. He was a keen curler, and his stones are still holding doors open around his former home. Then, in 1920, when the house passed to his nephew Gilbert, Winton under went a category change. Francis Ogilvy’s grandfather arrived with his wife and three children, soon to be joined by two more. At last there was a proper family to climb the trees, torment the gardeners and play hide-and-seek in the cellars and closets.

His own children’s experience is more sociable than Ogilvy’s own more solitary childhood. “For them it’s a massive playground – albeit with plenty of no-go areas.” Snowed in at New Year, they made hockey sticks out of newspapers, found a foam ball and converted the dining room – which has a smooth floor for dancing – into a hockey pitch. They spread out around the house to practise their pianos, violins and drums. When that’s over, they rollerblade around the basement.

The inspiring King Charles Room

Living in a “national treasure” is, says Ogilvy, a constant balancing act. There is always a decision to be made. When they installed central heating, the family considered ornate iron radiators. Then they changed their mind. “Who looks at the radiators when there are Van Dycks on the wall?”

Sometimes the doors are thrown open, as in the 25th September for the Lammermuir music festival, and at other times they are firmly closed. “A couple of years ago Dorothy said it felt as if the family home was now in the venue rather than the other way around, signalling a need for change. We don’t want the place to burn out and I don’t want to
burn out.”

Those lucky guests who come and use the house for a week can live in the style of Winton’s earlier inhabitants. “They walk for miles and miles, sit in front of the fire, soak up several centuries of history as if they have all the time in the world to do their crochet. We don’t have time to do that. But the people who spend hours and hours to make the place look nice love to know that their hard work is appreciated.”

Venezualan dinner guests brought to Winton by Eurowelcome Latin Travel (photo by Tony Marsh)

Chalmers & Co returns to the Haddington Show as the main sponsors on Saturday 2nd of July along with The Energy Saving Trust and Winton House, the castle and hospitality venue, as co-sponsors. All three organisations support a green approach to business and life style.

Chalmers & Co provides integrated, rural property services from its Haddington office – Architecture, Estate Agency, and Estate Management & Consultancy – which all contribute to the firm’s vision of “Shaping the countryside”. With its roots firmly planted in agricultural East Lothian, the firm has many long standing local landowners, landlords and farmers as clients.

Chalmers & Co, whose Haddington High Street offices are heated by a state-of-the-art wood pellet heating system, also advises clients on renewable energy options and on both how to save money through energy efficiency and how to generate it from wind and wood, the sun and the earth, and generous government incentives.  Combining the in-house teams with specialist external consultants enables clients to benefit from genuinely impartial, professional advice that highlights the opportunities whilst exposing the myths about renewable energy. 

Show co-sponsor Winton House is an exclusive use castle with a green approach to business.  It has just achieved a gold Green Tourism Business Scheme award (GTBS) for its sustainable hospitality services and corporate responsibility policy. Winton has hosted many memorable private parties over the centuries and continues that tradition today with private celebrations, weddings, dinners and corporate events (and not just for Jacobites!). The spectacular venue is a hidden gem in the heart of the county where all things green and local come naturally. 

Sarah Fuller, a surveyor at Chalmers & Co, comments: “The introduction of the government’s Feed-in-Tariff has transformed the economic case for small scale wind energy – even a single turbine can now prove very worthwhile.   There is often more than one energy option for farms and domestic property. For unbiased studies of real-life projects, a good starting point is the website www.greenenergynet.com. Chalmers & Co has a local link with the company behind the website which offers professional, renewables consultancy services for some of our clients.“

David Brackenridge, Chalmers & Co’s chartered architect, says: “With fuel costs likely to stay high, home owners and landlords need to consider alternative energy solutions. We can offer cost effective, practical and sympathetic energy saving options for our clients. Chalmers & Co recently redeveloped a client’s 3 bedroom cottage; we stripped, insulated, double glazed and equipped it with a multi-fuel heating system including solar panels, doubling the capital value and which we re-let within two weeks of completion. ”

Home Renewables Advisor Pilar Rodriguez from co-sponsors the local Energy Saving Scotland advice centre will also be on hand to provide free, impartial advice on technology and funding for insulation and small-scale renewables.  The Energy Saving Trust helps people save energy and reduce carbon emissions.

Show visitors are invited to call into Chalmers & Co’s marquee for some locally produced light refreshments and to meet staff from all three organisations.

Further information: www.chalmers-surveyors.com (01620 824000) www.wintonhouse.co.uk (01875 340222) and www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/scotland (0800 512 012). The photograph is courtesy of  Tony Marsh Photography.

Winton House wins gold Green Tourism Business award

Winton House has just achieved a gold Green Tourism Business Scheme award (GTBS) for its sustainable approach to hospitality and corporate responsibility. Winton, an exclusive use venue in East Lothian, is committed to running Scottish weddings, tailor-made events, team-building activities, gala dinners, conferences and meetings whilst minimizing its impact on the environment. The GBTS is the UK’s most highly regarded sustainable tourism certification scheme, validated by VisitBritain. 

Winton House has joined other well known tourist and hospitality venues with gold awards such as Dynamic Earth, Prestonfield, The Bonham, Holyrood Park and the Scottish Seabird Centre. Winton House, half an hour from Edinburgh in East Lothian, has been a successful, ‘exclusive use’, corporate and private hospitality venue for the last 10 years.

“It’s fair to say that what we call ‘corporate responsibility’ today has been at the heart of Winton Estate’s management for hundreds of years, simply because it is good for the long term development of the Estate and the House. We’re obviously delighted with this Gold award,” says Sir Francis Ogilvy owner of Winton House.

The key components of Winton’s approach to sustainability are as follows:

• Wherever possible, Winton uses local suppliers and employs people living locally to support surrounding communities and minimize travel to work.
• Winton House is heated using its own waste wood and monitors energy consumption. The House and 5 cottages are heated by a wood chip fired boiler fuelled with wood from the Estate. This is estimated to save some 100 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions each year.
• Winton House’s gardens are managed for the long term by developing about 1,000 of its own plants each year from cuttings and seeds; encouraging wildlife by not over-cultivating; recycling its water, pots and compost; and restricting the use of pesticides. Consequently, the garden attracts butterflies, ducks, herons, geese, buzzards, woodpeckers, fieldfares, house martins and swallows, and even partridge, hares, roe deer and badgers.
• Winton Estate’s 850 acres of forestry and further 1,450 acres of farmland contribute to about 2,500 tonnes of carbon being absorbed from the atmosphere (the same as the carbon emissions from 250 average households).
• The farmland and forestry are managed in a sustainable way which encourages wildlife and biodiversity through wildlife corridors, uncropped areas and careful use of chemical sprays and fertilizers.
• The Winton events team recycles products consumed in the House and in the large, self-catering country houses (eg aluminium, glass, paper, computers).
• Winton’s events team has a long tradition of running charitable and community events each year, as well as our corporate and private events.

“We know that we can always do more, so we try not to be complacent,” adds Sir Francis.

You can see more at www.wintonhouse.co.uk and in the Corporate Responsibility section of their website.

Background for Editors

Winton House, an exclusive use venue, is perfect for memorable conferences, dinners and activities. Winner of World Travel Awards for three years for its exceptional customer care, Winton’s blue chip corporate guests have included Barclays, The Royal Bank of Scotland, Standard Life, Tesco Personal Finance, BBC Worldwide, Cisco Systems, Mercedes Benz, Microsoft, Toyota, PGA of America, as well as leading companies from France, Spain and Sweden.

Winton House’s layout with inter-connecting halls, drawing room, King Charles room, Cabinet Room and dining room, means that it caters well for intimate corporate dinners and business lunches for up to 84 people, as well as for bigger dinners of up to 200.  It also provide team-building activities including the Winton Highland Games and clay pigeon shooting with the 22 times Scottish champion.

For more information, please contact Christopher Lamotte on 07957 870071 or at Winton House on 01875 340222 christopher@wintonhouse.co.uk