Mill Cottage Bunessan https://what3words.com/area.flames.petrified
was purchased in 1983 and before we moved to Scotland. I say we, as Pam decided when the house was finished that she didn’t want to move and also she got a full time job at Hull University. The cottage itself was almost a ruin and belonged to a local chap who had recently died, called Callum MacPherson. He was well known in Bunessan as he was a piper and a fine craftsman. When I was in primary school, I had a poster on the wall about the Vikings and the refurbishment of the Abbey. Calum was probably the guy on the roof fashioning the timbers. The front door of the cottage was solid teak, from his days being the ships carpenter on the Queen Mary.
The locals weren’t too happy when we ripped the roof off the cottage, as they all thought that the house was habitable. Woodworm was the only real inhabitant of the structure, so there was no option. Chris Watts moved up to Scotland and stayed in a caravan at the side of the house with his dog Bob. Chris did all the drawings and on the house during the week, with me bringing materials at the weekend in my old white Transit van. I travelled up on a Thursday evening, once every two weeks and returned for work at the youth club in Knottingley on Monday evening.
I would pre fabricate things like the staircase in the youth club workshop and then fit them, with Crisis’s help at the weekend. Pam’s mum and dad also came up a couple of times to help, as the re build was quite extensive. It would have been much quicker to build a new one, but the house had real character and we got grants to help re build.
Bought Mill cottage from Argyll Estates for £13,000 . This was not the highest bid, but I found an error and confronted the Factor, a Mr Fairweather by personally visiting him in Inveraray, at the Estates Office
The house took about a year to renovate
June 87 considered buying the Mill for parents
9/9 86 plans passed
18th /06/93 Pam sells house to my parents £45,000
21st/06/93 Permission to put the residential caravan by the house for doctor Weekenborg
8th /12 94 purchase of garden plot £2,452
31/09/97 Sold to Norman and Margeret Tait £85,000
Nov 97, mum buys Sealladh Carrachan, but moves into Tigh Faire. We moved mum one way and the Taits on the return