Brian McEwan, of Taymouth Castle, takes us through the £100m restoration of the pile at Loch Tay.
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00:00So I'm with Brian McEwan, Director of Member Services and Experience at Taymouth Castle.
00:06And Brian, you've been really generous with your time this afternoon. You've shown us around this
00:10amazing building and really, you know, after this three-year project, to restore it to really how
00:16it was back in the early 1800s. And it really has been, you know, quite something to go around
00:22these rooms and to see the level of detail that's been achieved here. Now can you just give us an
00:28idea why this restoration, to this extent, has been so important to the owners of Taymouth Castle?
00:36Yeah, I suppose when you're taking on a building like this, you have to do it right and you want
00:42to do the building justice. And, you know, Discovery Land Company have just been so keen that
00:48everything is done by experts in their fields, so that we're restoring it to what it would have
00:54been like in 1842 when everything was kind of done and, you know, at that time where maybe say
00:59Queen Victoria was coming to visit. So what's been amazing for me is getting to learn from the
01:04craftsmen and the artisans that have worked. Like, you know, today we spent time with the
01:09Rainbow Glass Studios who conserve the medieval glass that we have in the banner
01:16hall here. And the things that they've learned just through that process that have never been
01:21done before is incredible. And, you know, I'm working with the most amazing historian, Gordon,
01:27from the Red Book of Scotland and he's already produced like a thesis level of work on the
01:34genealogy and the history of the Bradalban Camels and Taymouth and Ballach Castle. So, you know,
01:41we just have so much freedom to kind of like delve into that and learn and do it right.
01:46So can you give us an idea of how the castle was when the new owners came in? How it appeared
01:52compared to how it is now? Drastically different. If you look at, you know, a kind of grand hallway
01:59which is almost kind of reminds you of a cathedral that goes up 81 feet. When they kind of took
02:06kind of custodianship over, that was black and mouldy and the paint was chipping off all
02:13of the walls and then kind of falling in. There was so much like water ingress into the ceilings
02:18and the roofs and the floorboards. So it was pretty tired and kind of drab. One of my favourite
02:25things that we've done is in our, you know, in the drawing rooms, is above that beautiful
02:31hand-painted ceiling which was done by the Crace brothers, there's four feet of crawl space
02:36and obviously there was such rot and damage in that room that we were able to repair. So
02:42the whole ceiling has been replaced and, you know, who could say it could have been another couple
02:47of winters and a bit more water getting into that room and it could have been that, it could
02:51have collapsed. So we're lucky that, you know, Discoveryland managed to get in. What has been
02:55the reaction of guests when they come in and they see this Scottish Victorian castle in this grand
03:02kind of gothic style? What's the reaction been? Oh, I mean it's the same as I do every single
03:10day when you walk in and you look up that, you know, you look up the grand hallway. It's just
03:15mind-blowing and you come into a room like this and you just look at the ceiling and see these
03:19beautiful heraldic coats of arms showing the kind of marital alliances. I mean every single room
03:25there is something. So when the guests come in they're completely blown away and mesmerised. It
03:30was only a few weeks ago we did an amazing community day so we welcomed in, you know,
03:35residents in the area to show them the restoration work that has happened and that was,
03:41you know, I was one of the tour guides on the day showing them around and that was amazing just
03:45seeing people's reaction to a building that some of them had been in before and they had seen how,
03:51you know, seen the bad state of repair that the castle was in to now see it kind of back to what
03:57it would have been like, you know, back in the day. It was amazing.