Garden and Surroundings
The Gardeners cottage was the stable block for Viewfield House. In former times it consisted of a coach house, with dovecote above, a tack room with a grooms bedroom above it, and stabling with loose boxes for half a dozen horses, with a hay loft above them. At the far end there was a byre for the two household milking cows and three substantial dog kennels to the rear. In the late 1920s when horses had ceased to be an important and necessary part of life, the central part of the building was converted into a cottage for the Gardener. Hugh Macdonald and his then wife Linda lived in the gardeners cottage with their two small children for a period after they were married. The accommodation was cold and pretty basic and they gutted the building from end to end in 1989 turning it into the comfortable family house it is today. Five years later the family moved out to another house and started letting the cottage for self catering. Two of the families who came to the cottage in the first year it was available to let are still coming today. For further history of Viewfield please click here.
Viewfield has twenty acres of woodland garden all round it and the grounds with their associated gardens and footpaths are all open for use by our cottage guests. A path leads from the rear of the cottage up the hill to join into the forest walk and it is possible to walk or run along the forest track to Glen Varagil two miles away. The same path also takes you onto the open hill and from here you can walk to Fingals seat, a marvellous all round view point. A pathway from in front of the house leads down through the old vegetable garden (now a small nursery) across the burn and down towards the village of Portree.
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Gardeners Cottage |
Gardeners Cottage |
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The garden in the winter |
The Old Privy |
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Sunset over Gardeners Cottage |
Viewfield House in spring |
