Warm Respect for a Scottish Ruin

Alex and Seonaid Maclean-Bristol’s house on the Isle of Coll in Scotland was built in the ruins of a house abandoned 150 years earlier.

"ON the tiny wind-lashed Isle of Coll in northwest Scotland, a modern five-bedroom farmhouse has risen from the ruins of a local landmark known as the White House, built in the mid-1700s.

The roofless limestone ruin had lain empty for more than 150 years before its transformation by Alex and Seonaid Maclean-Bristol, who share it with their children, Archie, 7; Fergus, 5; and Xander, 2. “There’s no part of the house that I don’t find magical,” said Mrs. Maclean-Bristol, 39, gazing out the glass walls in the living room toward the Atlantic, lapping at the rocky coastline that cups Rough Bay, or Grishipol in Gaelic.

The home is on one of a group of islands known as the Inner Hebrides that has a population of about 200."

SLIDESHOW

Via Jason, Belle Grove