Laggan Cottage

Laggan sits at the quietest end of the Gairnshiel estate, down in Glengairn where the River Gairn runs through the Cairngorms National Park. This is Royal Deeside, and the estate shares a fence line with Balmoral, about ten minutes away. Ballater is six miles east, with cafés, a butcher and the old royal station, and Braemar is another twenty-five minutes on, home to the Fife Arms and its enormous art collection, and to the Highland Games each September. Beyond the garden fence the estate opens onto moor, forest and river, with hill walking, salmon fishing and cycling from the door, and three of Scotland's five ski resorts within a winter day.

The cottage was built in 1880 and rebuilt in 2021 by the Belgian family behind Gairnshiel Lodge, with interiors by Maarten Van Meerbeeck. What makes it unusual is that it holds part of the family's design collection, and they buy pieces that connect through history and then keep them in use. The Rietveld Utrecht chair is for sitting in, the Chapo table is for long dinners, the Noguchi Akari glows in the corner. During the rebuild they converted the old shed down at the water into a fourth bedroom, standing apart from the house, with windows onto the burn and the hills and a coffee station so the first cup of the day happens closer to the river than the kitchen. The main house holds an open kitchen and dining room and a living room with a small bar, and fires are laid indoors and out. In a Highland midsummer the evenings barely go dark.