Updates from site

February 2025

Scottish Water Byelaw Inspection

We were pleased to have Alan Duffy, Scottish Water Byelaws Compliance Officer, visit Saddell Estate this Tuesday along with local Scottish Water operatives from Campbeltown to inspect our properties and discuss the importance of byelaw regulations.

We took the opportunity to visit Saddell Castle to inspect the new plumbing works – and our thanks to Grant Henderson of RM Plumbing for his professional decorum as Alan calmly interrogated his workmanship and reiterated the consequence of double-check valves to protect the public water supply.

Alan proved to be a font of knowledge (water pun intended!) and an authoritative advocate of the Water Regs UK Limited - Home. Alan’s knowledge and experience is only matched by his absolute clarity and unequivocal delivery – his elocution really impressed the real and serious potential for water contamination, and the relatively simple and effective means available to protect our public water supply. Alan is a true ambassador for Scottish Water and a testimony to their commitment to protecting our most precious natural resource.

Winter 2024

A new colour for Saddell Castle

Saddell Castle has a brand new look - with a bold new colour chosen to match the ochre-coloured sand on Saddell beach. We took this decision for two reasons: firstly, because small areas of discrete historic samples were uncovered during the harl removal process which hinted at an original ochre colour, and secondly because the original harl and limewash would have been made using local materials in the vernacular tradition, so it made sense to look to the building’s immediate environment to inform its colour.

We went through a process of sample panels using various ratios of natural pigments (burnt umbra, sienna etc) to really hone into the colour of the beach – a challenging task to pick out the colours amongst the variety of sand grains, geological and colour variation in different weathers.

After we settled on our colour, the limewash was created and burnished onto the lime harling . We have two coats of standard, unpigmented limewash to unify the background texture and four coats of coloured limewash to create the depth of colour and tone.

Landmark Director Anna Keay quoted Aristotle by describing the final result as ‘surprising yet inevitable’, reflecting on the striking visual impact yet also the historic justification and ‘natural’ result.

July 2024 

Time for lime

Exterior works at Saddell Castle have been continuing apace. Stonemasons and plasterers from Limerich have been working on the final big push to get the castle walls fully prepared by removing all cement finishes and exposing the stone and lime fabric. The next stage is steam cleaning in preparation for the deep void packing, pinning, lime pointing, then finally lime harling. Liam (pictured) from Limerich has really enjoyed constructing the stone parapet wall heads. He also led the construction of brick construction detail on the chimneys.

Wallheads have been consolidated and new sandstone copes installed, 'merlons' (solid upright section of the battlement) and 'cheeks' (sides of the walls) are now ready for the crenellations next week. The south gable has been harled with feather detail integrating crow steps, now ready for limewashing. Lead spouts are now collecting water from the inside parapet and yellow 'trunks' have been fitted to displace rainwater away from the walls in an effort to dry them out before poultice lime is added. 

July also saw SPAB Scotland bring a group of limeworking students along to Saddell Castle to learn traditional limeworking techniques and carry out real repairs on a live site under the tutelage of Richard Fraser and the team at Limerich. Attendees learned about hot mixing of lime mortar and harling, and applying the harling. They finished off with some lime washing - and, as these pictures show, a big smile!

March 2024

The first weeks have seen a hive of activity unfold across the Castle. Landmark's Regional Surveyor, Zac Manning reflects on what’s been achieved so far.

Clyde Scaffolding are racing on with the scaffolding – we are now at parapet level and almost at the chimneys, while they still need to tie into the masonry, secure the scaffolding boards and install the debris netting. Meanwhile at ground level, we had the Limerich Team removing the defective harl and revealing the underlying stonework. 

We had ecologist Charlotte from David Dodds installing bat boxes, delivering a toolbox talk on bat protection and supervising the removal of slates. Calum McKinven Contractors are tasked with stripping the roof slates, and Nick Blair of ZM Architecture was on site to inspect the proposed new/salvaged slate replacement and meet with Chris Pritchard of William Waugh.

Roddie from Argyll Archaeology was also on site supervising the excavation works to the basement and external plant room under a Watching Brief – he uncovered a range of glass bottles and pottery, including delftware – this treasure trove will be cleaned up and presented in the archaeological evaluation report. Ben Millar and team from J Plant Hire made short work of the removal of the concrete basement – now we need to reduce levels slightly, so Roddie will shortly return to supervise this.

We also had delivery of the site welfare units comprising storage and office (which sit of top of one another), which proved a wee bit challenging in a small site – especially when the office arrived before the storage unit despite Chris’ specific instructions!