The Museum of Scottish Lighthouses and Duff House: Day 21 – Scotland 2017

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26 April 2017

We woke warm and rested after a cozy night in our pod. Seriously, they are a wonderful camping upgrade when the weather takes a turn for the worse! It was bitter cold outside, and there was still sleet on the ground. Not to be deterred, we packed up the car and moved on down the road.

The Museum of Scottish Lighthouses

I don’t know what it is about lighthouses, but they’ve always drawn my eye. I find them both romantic and lonely, an odd combo, but one that works. This song does a good job of throwing those two emotions into one, and I play it over in my head every time we’re near a lighthouse.

We were drawn to The Museum of Scottish Lighthouses because you can tour Kinnaird Head Lighthouse, the first lighthouse on the Scottish mainland. The museum that is inside Kinnaird Head Castle details the history of the Northern Lighthouse Board. There is plentiful information on Scottish lighthouses, their builder, and their keepers.

We had a guided tour of the lighthouse, which ended up just being us and the tour guide. I loved being able to climb up into the lighthouse and see how everything worked up close. It was actually the first lighthouse either of us had been in, let alone all the way to the top. It was amazing! We were having such a great conversation with our tour guide that we completely forgot to take pictures of the inner workings. However, we did snap a whole one photo while grabbing a bite to eat in the cafe. Afterward, we hit the gift shop, I added one more book to the pile, and then we were back on the road.

Duff House

Let me start by saying we were not on our photo game on this day. Granted, we didn’t know we’d be starting a travel blog 3 years in the future, but seriously Past Lydia and Past Billy. Where were your heads? We only have a handful of photos from The Museum of Scottish Lighthouses, and neither of us took any photos of Duff House, inside or out. I don’t think Duff House allowed photography inside, and there was scaffolding around the outside of the building during our visit, but I still find that as no excuse. I did, however, snap a photo in the bathroom. The tile was pretty and I wanted to send a picture of it to my mom. So here you go—our one photo from Duff House.

If you want to see what Duff House actually looks like, check out TripAdvisor for visitor photos! It is a stunning baroque mansion that has a front staircase to die for. The building that you see today is not the full original design because there was some major drama surrounding this massive house. William Duff, a politician and businessman, hired William Adam to design his house. The home was to be a status symbol of sorts, showing in the biggest way how successful Duff was. Adam began construction on the house in 1735, but the work halted in 1741.

The usual issue of money had reared its ugly head, and a 5-year court battle began. In the end, Adam won out, but he died before he got the money owed to him. Duff, incredibly bitter about the whole ordeal, refused to spend a single night in the house. His heirs eventually inherited the house and were left to finish the work. The house that stands today is only the middle section of the original blueprints. There were supposed to be two curved wings of the house on either side of the main building. Unfortunately, the family never built them.

Visiting Today

Duff House has seen quite a bit since it was finished in the mid-1700s. After the Duff family moved out and gifted the house to the nearby towns, it saw life as a hotel, a sanitorium, an internment camp, a POW camp, headquarters for various units and divisions during WWII, and by the 1950s, the house started to fall into ruin. As you can imagine, the rooms changed drastically over the years, with many larger rooms broken up into smaller ones.

The original art collections and furnishings are long gone, but the current art displays give visitors an idea of the splendor the house once held. The Erskine Family is to thank for many of the pieces of furniture and china that are on display, as well as some of the other paintings. Walking through the house is like stepping back in time, and the restoration and conservation of the house are nothing short of breathtaking. I’d move in in a heartbeat!

Another Camping Upgrade

We were slated for a night in the tent, but with the weather still hovering above frigid, we booked an indoor stay. It was bigger than our tent. And the pod we’d stayed in the night before. In fact, it could have easily slept five people. We rented a static caravan for two nights, and it had far more space than we needed. We slept in the living room area, even though it had two bedrooms, just to be nearer the heater. It was one of the best decisions we could have made. Earlier in the day, we’d frozen while at the Museum of Scottish Lighthouses and were finally starting to thaw at Duff House. However, the temperature outside was plummeting again. We were far more comfortable snuggled up in the warmth rather than shivering in our tent in near-freezing temps!
Cheers,
Lydia and Billy