By 2016, Rodel House had known many incarnations, as a home, a fishing lodge, a storehouse and a hotel with a famous, or possibly infamous bar, where many a young lad first sipped whisky, often from a pint mug.
Gradually, though, the glory of the house was fading. Several new external additions, coupled with drastic alterations to the interior had done little to improve it, and business had fallen off. But although the building was in a sorry state, the bones of its lovely original design were still there, and its new owner determined to restore it.
It was built by Captain Alexander MacLeod in about 1819. Soon afterwards, the artist and traveller William Daniell made a famous painting of the house in its setting: this was to become the template for its recent restoration, when the intervening two centuries had taken their toll. The first task was to strip away all the accretions of previous decades and then to recreate as much of the original interior as possible, employing the skills of all the best artists and craftsmen available
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The predominant material of walls, ceilings and floors is wood. As there are only a few trees on Harris, it has been imported from various sources: there are broad pine Georgian floorboards; there is silver-grey Siberian larch and there is painted panelling from an old mill on the mainland, all combining and complementing each other in different rooms. Wool, Harris Tweed and corduroy cover many of the cushions and chairs, again in a natural colour spectrum of earth, sea and sky.
Such attention to detail extends throughout the house, to the kitchen and bathrooms and beyond. There are three cast-iron roll-top baths, and all the taps, switches, towel-rails etc. are made of unlacquered brass, a material that gradually, visibly ages, loses its shine and looks as if it has been there forever. *[These and many other features of the interior are inspired by the designer Maria Speake, whose company, Retrouvius, specialises in reclaiming and repurposing old materials.] Whatever could be retrieved and re-used is supplemented by the simple, the classic, the appropriate. The effect of such an overall vision is genuinely soothing. It feels very like coming home.
