An arts tower for Ayrshire?
THIRTY YEARS ago, after a ten year search, James Brown bought for £25,000 Baltersan Castle, a ruined 16th century tower-house near Maybole in Ayrshire. From the time when he was a boy Brown, now a retired businessman from Ayr, was obsessed by the idea of owning a castle. Knights on chargers, portcullises, dungeons and the odd crenellation in a parapet were his passion.
Baltersan was built in 1584 for John Kennedy of Pennyglen and remained unaltered until 1745 when it was abandoned. In 1971, Historic Scotland listed the castle as a Category B building and in 1995 they upgraded it to a Category A.
Angelo Ovidi
After the purchase, Brown cleared out 250 years worth of muck from its interior. To manage the restoration, he established a company called Lichtsome Hoose Ltd., meaning ‘carefree’ in Scots.
The word’s irony wasn’t lost on him, especially when he applied for planning permission, sent begging letters for funding, consulted lawyers, surveyors and got architects to draw plans.
Brown’s dream was, once the castle was restored, to turn it into a luxury guest-house with a grand hall, dining room and sleeping accommodation, introduce time-shares and, since the castle is situated near Troon and Turnberry, offer exclusive occupancy to world-class golfers.
By the early 2000s, Brown got planning permission and Historic Scotland promised £ 300,000. By 2008, however, when the global financial crisis hit and a US investment failed, he had to accept he was done. He’d spent £ 120,000 on ‘his baby’, but apart from erecting a strong fence around the property, the castle was in much the same state as he had found it in.
Brown’s devotion to his castle is impressive but what, asks your ArtWork reporter, is so bad about a ruin? As you drive through Kirkoswald towards Ayr, you pass Crossraguel Abbey.Damaged and roofless with absent walls, it has a sense of mystery, silence and timelessness about it. Farther down the road stands Baltersan which once had strong ties to the abbey.
Unlike Nature, man-made structures decay. “There are plenty ruined buildings,” wrote Hugh MacDiarmid, “but no ruined stones.” Restoration can falsify the integrity of a building by concealing its weathering and stresses.
As with humans, dilapidation should be recognised as a part of life, particularly in an age that likes air-brushing, face-lifts, boob and hair implants. Why renovate a place abandoned for centuries? Nobody has rebuilt the Colosseum, Pompeii or the Acropolis, remembering that our predecessors vandalised the latter when they carted off its sculptures to the British Museum.
Theft like this happens. How many stones from Hadrian’s Wall have been snaffled up for neighbouring cottage and farmhouse lintels, hearth-stones and doorsteps?
As a subject, ruins can be as popular with artists as portraiture or still life. Take J M W Turner’s ‘Tintern Abbey’ or the French Romantic painter, Hubert Robert’s, ‘Roman Ruins’ (c.1760), that shows a broken colonnade, crumbling Corinthian columns with villagers milking cows, herding sheep and washing linen in the foreground.
Baltersan Castle now has a new owner, an Italian computer engineer from Wales. With a surname that connects him to the literary past, Angelo Ovidi, isn’t keen on leaving his new purchase as a ruin.
Like Burns, Keats and Charles Rennie Mackintosh before him, Ovidi is charmed by the castle’s history and surroundings. He wants to raise money for the restoration by launching a food and drink brand that trades on the image of the castle’s structure.
On his glitzy website, he advertises Baltersan whisky, tartan, lotions and jewellery. “It’s not impossible for us to restore this property if everything goes to plan; I’m trying to keep my feet on the ground.”
Nicholas Howie of Lindsays, who advised on the sale of Balterson, admitted “a lot needs to be done, but with the right finance it could be rewarding.”
When the job’s done, it’s doubtful if Ovidi will get much change out of £ 2 million. He wants to set up a music school providing ‘master-classes with internationally-renowned musicians’ and musical instrument-making workshops.
It’s nice to imagine oneself sitting in the great hall of a Renaissance, Scottish castle listening to string quartets and woodwind ensembles perform, but that £ 2 million, if spent differently, could supply musical instruments and tuition to many children who otherwise wouldn’t have the chance to learn.
It’s not master-classes that the young need or to be taught by world-renowned musicians in a magnificent castle. It’s the basics. A decent instrument and good tuition. Music can be played anywhere and by anyone but today, in the UK, it’s not properly funded in schools, as the composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber has complained.
Raploch, once a stigmatised estate by Stirling, isn’t geographically far from Baltersan but socially a long way off. Rather than knife crime or vandalism, it’s now famed for musical talent.
Inspired by Jose Abreu, who taught music in Venezuala’s poorest neighbourhoods, some Raploch youngsters, after receiving intensive, music tuition, joined Venezuala’s Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra and performed, not in a castle but in different venues, including a cold, wet field.
Angelo Ovidi deserves recognition for his vision. Italian flair is needed in a disaffected, depressed, south-west Scottish region. His is a brave, mad venture and I hope it succeeds, especially when a few miles down the road stands the antithesis of Baltersan Castle, the brash, nouveau-riche property of an orange-faced, bouffant-haired bully-boy. It’s called Trump Turnberry.
MARY GLADSTONE
