A plan to demolish paedophile TV presenter Jimmy Savile’s holiday house in Glencoe and supplant it with a family home honouring a different famous resident has been revealed in an application to Highland Council.
Savile, who was unmasked as one of Britain’s most prolific sex offenders, owned Allt-na-Reigh cottage by the A82, overlooking the Bidean nam Bian Mountain or ‘Three Sisters of Glencoe’, from 1998 until his death in 2011. The cottage attracted graffiti targeted at Savile, and became an eyesore in one Scotland’s most beautiful and visited spots.
The site’s new owner is the family of Harris Aslam, boss of Kirkcaldy-based convenience stores business Greens Retail Ltd, who bought it for a sum reported to be £335,000.
Mr Aslam earlier told The Lochaber Times that he knows the area well, having spent time hillwalking nearby, and wanted to turn the property into a family home.
However, recognising the property’s dark past due to its link with Savile, he said he wanted to do something positive such as create a lasting memorial to another previous owner, the late great mountaineering pioneer Hamish MacInnes, who died in 2020.
It has been proposed to demolish the cottage and build a three-bedroom, 1.75 storey family dwelling. Previous plans for the site were withdrawn after concerns the design did not fit the character of the surrounding landscape.
In the newly submitted planning application, the project’s architects do not mention Savile by name and only describe him as a “disgraced previous owner”.
“The site currently has a single dwelling within the plot with associated outbuilding, however over the years these buildings have lain vacant with the main dwelling becoming subject to some well publicised vandalism.
“It is a location which contains some of the finest scenery Scotland has to offer, yet despite this, the vandalism demonstrates a feeling towards the property, born from a disgraced previous owner, in spite of the fact that another previous owner was the renowned Scottish mountaineer Hamish MacInnes.
“This conflict between the location and the connection to one of the previous owners was highlighted when VisitScotland used an image of the property with the ‘Three Sisters of Glencoe’ in the background to promote the area, only to have to remove the image admitting it had been posted in error due to the negative reaction it received from the public.
“A VisitScotland spokesperson commented: ‘Our social media channels are used to inspire people to visit Scotland, because of this we often share stunning images taking by visitors to our country. In error, we shared on Instagram an image depicting snow-capped mountains in Glencoe which also contained a building. We later decided to remove it in case it caused any offence.’”
The architecture firm, Jon Frullani, continued: “The proposal is for a three-bedroom family home over a 1.75 storey dwelling with high quality architectural design and inviting spaces which take advantage of the scenery.
“The outhouses are the original workshops of mountaineer Hamish MacInnes where he developed and invented famous equipment. It is in this memory that this unit is to be designed as ancillary accommodation to the main dwelling and to be named the Hamish House to retain that aspect of history.
“On 7 September 2021 our clients held a public consultation with members of the local community as well as interested parties.
“It is our clients aim to focus on the positive aspect of the site by renovating the existing outbuilding where Hamish MacInnes developed the MacInnes Stretcher as well as the MacInnes Terrordactyl Ice Axe, and this was well received by the attendees who voiced their thoughts during the consultation.”