From the outside, Rodel House stands, sturdy and strong on its grassy platform, looking east across the Little Minch to the Isle of Skye.
Like the landscape itself, the pale, lime-washed walls subtly change colour with the capricious dictates of the weather, under a grey slate roof. Seen from the harbour, it has an endearingly confident air of its own perfection, an eighteenth-century awareness of its pleasing proportions.
There are a few other buildings nearby. The largest is named the Sail Loft, once the place where sails were stored off-season, now a fine exhibition space, with its own Green Room and kitchen.
It is available to guests for various events – whisky tasting, perhaps, or poetry, or a banquet, or storytelling with a harp, or maybe a ceilidh.
The Manager’s quarters, and a boot-room and drying-room are reached through an old, covered archway known as the Pend. A large walled garden is in process of restoration, and a roofed and sheltered spot has been made in the wall facing out to sea. With a stone floor, benches and a table, it is called the Sitooterie, or a place to ‘sit oot’.
guardian@rodelhouse.co.uk to book | Contact us
Inside, Rodel House within is luminous and welcoming. Six tall windows in the ground-floor Gathering Room, each with functional, hand-made wooden shutters and deep, upholstered seats, betraying the formidable depth of the stone walls, and affording the spectacular, ever-changing views. On cooler days, under-floor heating maintains a steady, unobtrusive warmth throughout the house, while comfortable chairs and a splendid, enormous green stove offer a true island welcome.
The breakfast-room opens from here, and leads to a bright, well-equipped kitchen.
guardian@rodelhouse.co.uk to book | Contact us
Just outside the door of the Gathering Room, a sliding hatch reveals a rope-operated dumb waiter, large enough for a tray of morning tea or coffee, or evening drinks and canapés to be pulled up to the upper floors, including the Drawing Room that echoes all the comfort of the lower floor, with the addition of a magnificent open peat fire.
The adjacent Chart Room, a small, curtained space with a library, provides an elegant snug for reading or intimate candle-lit dining for two.
