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Category: And The Next Thing is …
We have just posted the full pdf of the draft plans into our archive on the Dunans Rising App, as well as the Lairds and Ladies website. We’re delighted with the results and wanted to share three screen grabs of the highlights …
The first is the plan for the first storey:
This is an important evolution because the exit at the back of the building allows us to use both the first and ground floors each for 100 guests. This capacity is critical in making the building sustainable.
The fire escape creates what we think is a really interesting intervention in the rear elevation of the castle – particularly so because the spiral stair will mirror the internal one.
Without the stair, in its original format, the building is only prevented from seeming weighted to the lefthand side by the wonderful Russian Vine which masks the effect. With the escape we think the elevation now looks much more ‘grounded’. And of course the balustrade on the platform will mirror the one on the roof!
The roof itself, provides the third grab and one of the most delicious prospects in the revitalised castle – a roof terrace. 
One of the disadvantages of living in Scotland during the winter is the lack of light. Dawn can be as late as 9am and dusk as early as 3.30pm. A roof terrace coupled with the cupola, sending light deep into the building’s interior will create a winter-proof building which will be a delight to use.
These plans provide for three self-catering apartments accommodating up to 14 and two floors of event space which in turn means that the building will be sustainable far into the future.
Obviously these are draft plans, and subject to all the usual reservations about things changing, but they provide us with two things: a concrete costing to base our projects on with regard to finance and funding; and a definite vision of how this building will be used – a vision we think will be realised in shorter order than we thought even 6 months ago!
… Well we all knew that anyway didn’t we? Over two hundred venues and many thousands of performances, The Walking Theatre Co. have done extremely well with online and offline marketing and PR, however, sometimes the old old is the new new, and this time a pop-up was required for an upcoming event.
Based on our successful series of tour posters (see above), I’ve just designed this …
We’re delighted to say that our new app is selling like the proverbial hotcakes. Thank you everyone for supporting us – and if you have missed out click here.
To celebrate, we’re updating the app-exclusive visual tour map with new photos (like these lovely daffodils) and a new class of marker – videos. The first video we’re including are shorts that we have already posted, but make sure you keep an eye on the map as we’re intending to load more and more content!
… and of course we are still adding content and material, but finally dear old Apple have given the go-ahead for our app, which is on the iTunes store as I type.
To download one or the other for a nominal fee, please go to our app page here.
The app brings news, photos, video and tweets directly to hand, with tour booking, audio tours, virtual tours and the tour calendar all included. We’ve also shoe-horned the shop in to enable easy tartan purchasing, as well as more details about how to reach us, how to save money on your bills and contribute to the restoration at the same time, how to locate your plot and how to find our geocache (The Laird’s Purse).
We’re now looking at a tablet app – a completely different challenge!
For a while now we have been holding four pallets of West Coast slate at the front of the castle. With the ongoing preparation for clearance of the building we needed to use them. The problem was not the slates we could use, but those we couldn’t. Because these were recovered from buildings on which they’d been in use for over 50 and sometimes 120 years, many of them had started to delaminate. Others had not fared so well in transit, being chipped and cracked. After sorting we had over 500 slates left. What to do?
Well, for a while now the local buses have been using the drivehead to turn and they have been recently upgraded to a size, maybe 15% bigger, meaning that both of our standing stones were vulnerable to a slipped clutch, overeager throttle or just bad driving. We noted big bus tire tracks within inches of the bigger one around which everyone turns. Something had to be done, and the slates provided the solution.
For the last couple of weeks Mike, our local neighbourhood man of all trades, has been turning the unuseable into something rather splendid. All that remains is to finish off the area inside the larger curb and we’ll start looking very tidy.
… Well, its not there now, because beneath it is a bloke in a bowler hat.”
Apologies for quoting that evergreen top twenty hit from Bernard Cribbins about a jobsworth inspecting holes, but it has been threading through my thoughts all today as I excavated 4 x 2.5m holes around Dunans today, and then filled them in.
What was the purpose of this seemingly pointless exercise? Well, apart from giving me the opportunity to sing like Mr. Cribbin all day? To ascertain what the castle stands on. The answer is mixed. At the front of the castle we have a layer of gravel, followed by medium-sized stones and then a sandy soil down to at least 2.75m. At the side of the castle, we have a topsoil of 50cm, a layer of compacted earth for the next metre and a half and then sopping wet grey clay, hardening to schist somewhere below 2.5 metres. The back is a tale of sopping wet Clay from top soil down, and then further out on the south lawn (if you can call it that – maybe swamp would be better … Well, after 50cm of sopping turf and soil we get a surprisingly dry compacted earth which at around 1.5m goes into grey clay. 50cms below that it turns into grey schist which defies the digger.
I think Steve and Rebecca, our structural engineers from David Narro Associates were encouraged by the last pit, but overall? We’ve got to wait and see!
When we purchased Dunans in 2003 we did not receive any of the historic documentation. While the Fletchers hand the paperwork on in good faith, the subsequent owner did not pass the plans on. It is a great pity, because without those plans and specifications we are unable to say that the work that Robin Kent, our architect, has put into creating these drafts has resulted in an entirely accurate rendition.
Certainly what we have here reflects our knowledge – won from the building over the years of clearance and renovation – but whether the family originally intended this layout is a moot point. There are a couple of revisions we have already noted given some of the clearance we have achieved, but it does seem an entirely selfish act on the part of the ex-owner to withhold these papers, unless of course they lost the archive entirely …
What these plans also show is how little service room the house originally had, and how essential the Dunans Steadings must have been to the household economy.
The plans above clearly show the way that the old house was used to service the main block, and also how reception rooms were located on the first storey, with Dining, the smoking room and all things “sporting” occurring on the ground floor.
The second version of the sketch plans are in, designed to feed into a sustainable future for Dunans. The idea is that the ground and first storeys are used for functions and conferences, and storeys three and four are given over to accommodation for those who wish to stay here. We think the spiral staircase at the centre of the design will be extraordinary, as it is also a light well, creating a shaft of illumination through the building.
… and this is only possible because of two changes in the brief since draft v0.1. Firstly, we *think* a second staircase is unnecessary – or at least that is the advice ABC is giving us. And secondly, the interior walls are going to have to be stripped away. This means that we free up 10s of cubic metres of space … and space is becoming evermore valuable as we work on the business plan.
So before we feedback, we’ll be looking at the business plan and cash flows and seeing whether the raw capacity numbers add up. The other component I am presently working on is the market for conferencing – finding comparables, taking advice and not being too bullish … which is difficult given the prospect of the spiral (at the same dimension of the main turret) …
… and yours truly gets to design the poster! Great fun photos and a cut-out of Long John Silver to boot. Should encourage venues to take part in what looks like a really engaging tour.
