David Scott's remote 1950s West Highland folly tempted photographer Andy Stagg into a long journey north. How big would the strange structure be, when he got there?
Architectural historian Barnabas Calder may have brought it to wider attention in his book Raw Concrete, but this remote West Highland folly he termed a ‘Brutalist bothy’ has been part of the folklore of Achmelvich since the 1950s.
The bemused landowner who allowed eccentric Norwich architect David Scott to build it is long gone. But his daughter, who seemingly owns the caravan park nearby, remembers, as a girl, the months he spent on it – and that locals had looked on him as mad. The story goes that once it was finished, Scott spent just one weekend in his cement bed before he left, never to return; months of solitary effort salted by a lifetime of absence.
But its strange lack of scale drew Andy Stagg, who was curious enough to make the long journey north to spend a summer’s day and night in its aggregate grip. With walls formed of sand and pebbles from the beach below, it can at times be hard to see where rock stops and concrete starts.
But as a guide, he recalls of his first approach, openings are the size of a glass block and to its chimney it’s not a fathom and a half. But a narrow, sea-facing entrance stretches tall, as if in welcome to an Isle of Lewis Calanais stone, through which dazzling reflections can briefly ripple, turning dark concrete into an Aladdin’s cave of light.