The ruins of Granton House

After being rained off the M74 and spending the night at Tebay Services' caravan site (it doesn't matter what it looked like: the rain was so torrential that I didn't see anything of it) I headed for Dumfries and Galloway and the town of Moffat. It's an old county town, and I found a nice Caravan Club 5-van site which was just a field, but in a lovely valley.

One the first evening, I walked Bon down the quiet country lane and saw some ornate gateposts overgrown by trees. Thinking the gateposts too posh for a field, I sensed the presence of a country house - and was nosy enough to crash through the undergrowth and along a half-overgrown drive until I saw something scary and intriguing. A beautiful house, nearly falling down and burnt out. It was three storeys, made of local stone, and Georgian in style.

As I approached, a cloud of rooks rose from the ruins and frightened me half to death (and this is in the evening twilight, remember) but I forged through the garden and went up the steps, over a carpet of broken glass and plaster dust and bits of old furniture, up the old staircase with its cast-iron balustrade (treading carefully in case any of the steps fell through). At the top, I found the most beautiful, and sad, set of rooms. The lath-and-plaster in the ceilings was exposed, burnt furniture was everywhere, but you could still see that it had been the most stately of houses at one time, with high rooms and traditional sash-and-shutter windows. Young rooks panicked and crashed against the walls as we went into each room. The major part of the house, the frontage facing the valley with what must have been the grandest rooms in it, had completely fallen in, right into what must have been the servants' domain below stairs. It was the saddest thing - and very odd, thinking of the lives that must have been lived in the house and wondering why it had been left like that. Really, it was just a shell, held up by an external scaffolding of bolted-together RSJs, so in a terrible mess, and possibly now irredeemable.

I didn't take my camera on that walk, and so there are no pictures - but I don't think I could have captured it anyway, because it was so closed-in by encroaching trees. Once we had had a look round Bonnie was in a hurry to leave, and I felt odd and spooky too, so we left it behind. What I do have is a picture of Moffat House Hotel which is in a similar style, except the ruined house had a large neo-classical portico over the front door, made of red sandstone. And its chimneys made it look older than Georgian: they were ornate, and almost Elizabethan-looking (but careful here: as we go further back, the monarchs of Scotland are not the same as those of England!) I've since looked at the history of Moffat House and it was apparently designed for the Earl of Moffat by John Adam in 1761. And I've since had it confirmed by a historian friend that the ruined house is indeed an Adam house, which might make it contemporary - which explains my feeling about the chimneys being too early for Georgian. One of the main differences between the two houses is that my ruin is on a smaller scale overall, but the portico over the door reaches upwards over half of the second storey - so takes up half if not more of the front of the house in height. The Moffat House portico fits more snugly round the door, and is altogether less imposing.





When I got back to the campsite I asked the campsite owner about it. She said it was Granton House, which had been built as a farmhouse (! rich farmer), was a hotel at one time but then allegedly had been burnt for its insurance and the person who was responsible was now in prison. So it's just sitting there, presumably until it falls down.

It was an odd evening walk, and left me feeling shivery and in need of comfort. I was quite happy to shut myself in the van after that with the heater on and a cup of coffee, and snuggle down and read the paper, and try not to think about the house all empty and ruined, with the rooks flying about inside.