November 1998

. . .I have not been on site as much as I would have wished. But progress has been swift. During July and August - which this year were extraordinarily wet - some of the subterranean work was done. The drainage was installed, and one of the basements excavated. Unfortunately nothing of any interest was discovered; but the process coincided with the so-called 'slapping' which is a curious term for penetrating the wall. Some wall, in this case. To get the services into the cellar, a hole had to be created through ten feet of solid rock.

. . .In normal circumstances, this would be no easy task. But it turned out to be far from normal. Hammer, chisel, pick and flashlight were presented to the stones, but what we thought was rubble - indeed WAS rubble, on the surface - became bedrock. The wall was not just constructed on rock; in the mid-section, the wall WAS rock. So an ingenious material which expands (slowly, fortunately) had to be drilled into the surface every few inches, and left overnight to grow and split the unbroken bedrock of which the middle of the wall consisted. The process of getting a pipe for services from inside to out took three weeks.

. . .For gentle relief from the soul-destroying task of breaking through from cellar to outside world, the builders began to excavate the floor of the 'guard-room', the small chamber just inside the main door into the castle. The going suddently became unexpectedly easy. Hammers in hand, they discovered a void under a layer of concrete, concealing a small chamber in the thickness of the wall. Iain Thornber, local historian well-known to MacInneses, went up on site immediately, and returned with a resident archaeologist the following day. He describes it thus:

"The chamber is about seven foot deep, 8 foot long and about four feet wide tapering at the west end below the trap door. The ground is remarkable bare and we think we found bedrock. It is surprisingly 'empty' and from the marks on the walls (which still show signs of vegetation) I would guess it too was excavated or more likely cleaned out by the Ross squad" (the people involved in the Victorian restoration).
. . ."The interesting thing is that the walls show signs of having been coated with a lime mortar. There are several blocks of limestone showing some good examples of gryphea and other fossils. Three large mica-schist flagstones form the roof of the chamber. There is some dampness on the internal wall (which was obviously built later), indeed it is almost a steady trickle caused perhaps by the fact that the roof has recently been opened rather than a leakage from anywhere else. It will be interesting to take some levels to establish where it lies in relation to a) the outside ground level and b) the floor level of the vaulted cellars. At a cursory glance I am inclined to think the East End of the chamber was bricked up at a later stage and may well continue."

. . .We will certainly retain access to this exciting new find, probably
through a trap-door in the guardroom floor. I shall inform the authorities in due course.

. . .Meanwhile a service duct was being cut into the interior wall, to get the pipes etc. from basement level to the top storey. Hard work, but not complicated. The tin roof came off, and concrete padstones - beds for the load-bearing joists - were constructed in the wall-head. Scaffolding clothed the outside of the building, to parapet level - and since then, higher still. Twelve inch steel joists were hoisted in, with a crane working from the foot of the castle rock extending nearly 30 feet to get to the foot of the walls, another 40 feet to the wall-heads, and still more to give clearance to lower them into place.

. . .So the supports for the second floor were in, and on them a wooden floor constructed. Then the gables started rising above the parapet. The top two stories are masonry outside, and wooden-framed inside. The wood goes up first, so a strange apparition rose from the wall-heads: a kit house 40 feet in the air. We've never seen a Barratt home with such good foundations, people joked (Barratt are a proprietary form of speculative, rapid-build timber-framed house).

. . .Things have moved fast since. A period of good weather in September meant the roof trusses went up swiftly, and during October the sarking. The chimneys are built, and the framework of the top stories is almost complete. Slating is the next major development to be visible from outside.

. . .Meanwhile below little has happened. Windows remain unfitted and the intermediate floor unchaged. As the evenings draw in, Jane and I are poring over electrical plans, and deciding where to put furniture and pondering how a 6-foot long sofa will go up a narrow spiral stair (it won't).

. . .Second-hand baths and sinks must be found and plumbing finalized. Several large trees - oak, larch and Scots pine - were felled, taken into the estate yard and milled. The planks are away to be seasoned, and then back to make floors, doors, architraves and skirtings. The approach-road has been resurfaced - not for the last time - to soak up some of the autumnal mud.

. . .Things are going well, and each visit reveals more of what we will shortly be living in. Some rooms are small, but the views are sensational. The parapet-walk will be the finest place for a sundowner in the western highlands.

. . .By the time of the next bulletin, the windows should be in and the floors laid. Now that the rain can be kept out, the process of domesticating the ancient stones begins.