Perhaps best-known today for its role in television and film, including programmes such as Monarch of the Glen, The Crown and Mrs Brown, Ardverikie House is an architectural extravagance of steeply sloping roofs, turrets and towers. It is also the centrepiece of an archetypal Victorian estate extending to 41,000 acres which in its heyday was more than three times that size.
It was the creation of a Yorkshire landowner, Sir John Ramsden (1831-1914) who owned the whole of Huddersfield with the exception of one house; to add to this and his other properties, he amassed one of the largest estates in the Highlands, excepting those possessed by hereditary owners. In 1869 he began to acquire by purchase or exchange six estates which he described as his Castle in the Air, a phrase he coined some nine years before building the house which may be so described today.
To enjoy Ardverikie without the risk of intrusive neighbouring interests required a protective ring of satellite properties and it was to this end that a further four estates were added to the original purchase of Ardverikie and Ben Alder. There was also Aberarder, the final piece of the jigsaw which eluded him and to which he attached so much importance. This was eventually bought by his son, Sir John Frecheville Ramsden, fourteen years after his father's death.
It's a story of a Victorian patriarch, his ambitious building, planting and infrastructure projects, loyalty and generosity to family and employees and, overriding all, his passion for the romanticism and beauty of one of Britain's wildest regions.
The author worked as a chartered land agent in Lochaber and the wider Highlands for nearly forty years, before retiring in 2004. During that time, he was responsible for the management of many of the largest estates in the region and he has been chairman of The Ardverikie Estate Company since 2007. His other publications include Clanship to Capitalism. A History of the Estates of Lochaber from 1746 to the present day and Sixty Glorious Seasons, the Memoir of a Badenoch Stalker. 1883 -1966
The sport of deer stalking developed during the early decades of the 19th Century and was at its zenith between 1880 and 1914. It was a product of the Victorian era and the spirit of many of its leading lights spilled over into the literature of the sport.
Most of the stalking classics were written by well-educated gentlemen or lady aficionados of the sport – Thornton, Scrope, Grimble, Crealock, St. John and the Marchioness of Breadalbane to mention a few – but those written by stalkers can be numbered on one hand.
A Handbook of Deerstalking, by Alexander MacCrae, Published in 1880, followed in the 1960’s by the works of Lea MacNally spring to mind, but they are few and far between when compared with the literary output of the Victorian and Edwardian enthusiasts to whom descriptive writing came as second nature.
Another exception to this generality is The Memoirs of William Collie, a 19th Century Deerstalker, who lived between 1841 and 1910; by coincidence, he was employed on Glenfeshie from 1841 to 1854, first as a lady’s ghillie and latterly as head stalker and Finlay would undoubtedly have known him. Colie’s way of life would have been familiar to the young Finlay and, because of the connection, the relevant section of Collie’s memoir is included as an appendix.
Finlay Mackintosh’s memoir may lack the literary merit of the classics written by early exponents of the sport, but it shares the experiences of a lifetime of an observant and intelligent man with a wider world. It also sheds light on the childhood circumstances of a man who is still remembered in Badenoch.
The author worked as a chartered land agent in Lochaber and the wider Highlands for nearly forty years, before retiring in 2004. During that time, he was responsible for the management of many of the largest estates in the region and he has been chairman of The Ardverikie Estate Company since 2007. His other publications include Clanship to Capitalism. A History of the Estates of Lochaber from 1746 to the present day and Sixty Glorious Seasons, the Memoir of a Badenoch Stalker. 1883 - 1966
Ardverikie Estate Office
Kinloch Laggan
Newtonmore
Inverness-shire
PH20 1BX