Atholl Estates Newsletter
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Atholl Estates Newsletter Summer 2019 Welcome Or perhaps I should say ‘Happy Birthday’, the castle is 750 years old this year. It was in 1269 that the Atholl Earl of the day returned from the Crusades to find that he had acquired a squatter on his land, one John Comyn. The squatter was sent packing, but his name was given to the tower he built, now the tallest part of the castle bearing the flag. Visitors are reminded of the castle’s great age by a case in the Banvie Hall, next to the restaurant, packed with 750 objects – I counted them! As we go to print, the Atholl Highlanders are preparing for their annual parade, there are seven new recruits. On pages 8 & 9 their commanding officer has written an account of their tour last year to some of Belgium and France’s battle fields. Our guest writer this edition is Doug McAdam, a board member of the Cairngorm National Park, following the CNPA’s board meeting at Blair Castle and Bruar hydro visit. (pages 4 & 5) After a very active winter with projects and extra work going on in nearly all departments we are looking forward to a busy summer. Sarah Troughton New Faces Marion Chadwick Samantha Ball Catherine Booth Stuart Blues - shop assistant - office secretary - castle receptionist - director of finance manager We say farewell to… Janette Cumming after many years as housekeeper at Marble Lodge and previously Forest Lodge; Rebecca Cantwell an assistant housekeeper; Karen Haggart, shop assistant manager having worked in the shop for over 20 years; Jamie Davies, gardener; Colin Chisholm, rural worker; Belinda Tindale, marketing assistant; and finally John Milligan, accountant who had worked here for 22 years and his wife Myra, the castle book keeper. (see news in brief) Front cover: The Highland Ponies looking out from The Whim 2 Issue 33 News in Brief Stuart Blues joined the estate as Director of Finance on 1st May , taking over from John Milligan who retired at the end of February. Stuart, who resides in Blairgowrie and is married with a young daughter, was previously Head of Business Analysis at Gleneagles Hotels and prior to that, he was Audit Manager for Johnstone Carmichael LLP. John Milligan retired as Estate Accountant on the 1st of March this year after exactly 22 years – precise as ever. Over the years he transformed the accounting systems and developed a loyal and skilled team. He is seen here with Myra, his wife, who retired on the 29th April this year, and Jamie and Sarah at his leaving party. We welcomed Nick Nairn & Dougie Vipond to the Castle with the BBC Landward food truck in early April, they delved into our archives with Keren and discussed Queen Congratulations to Helen & Mark French Victoria’s extensive catering entourage. The on the birth of their baby son, Oscar David weather was with us with glorious sunshine Geoffrey French. He was 7.9 pounds at birth as Nick cooked with venison and trout from and born on Wed 3rd April. the estate, visitors to the castle that day got to Sam is currently covering Helen’s maternity taste the fayre and certainly seemed to enjoy leave, but retaining Helen’s email. it. Look out for the episode on BBC Scotland [email protected] coming soon. Many Congratulations to Gillie McNab, who was awarded the British Empire Medal (BEM) in the New Year’s Honours List for services to the Vale of Atholl Pipe Band and to the community in Perthshire. Please join us in sending very best wishes to Gillie on her well-deserved award. Issue 33 Summer 2019 3 News in Brief cont. March is Scotland’s tourism month and Congratulations to Malcolm Whyte for Friday the 15th was the constituency visiting receiving the award: “Special Constable of day. We were delighted to welcome Pete the Year” at the Scottish Policing Excellence Wishart MP for Perth and North Perthshire Awards, held on 1st February at the Scottish to Blair Castle, especially as we were in the Police College, Tulliallan. Malcolm is the process of preparing an exhibition on the estate’s woodland operations manager. 8th Duchess, Scotland’s first female MP. Cairngorm National Park Authority board visit to Atholl Estates Blair Castle on Atholl Estates surely provides one of the most stunning entrances to a National Park anywhere in the world. Where better then for the Board of the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) to hold their early Spring Board Meeting than at Blair Castle in the amazing ballroom. Following the formal board meeting, the Board and staff enjoyed an excellent lunch in the castle restaurant and were then welcomed by our hosts Sarah and Jamie Troughton. The second part of the day was spent learning more about the Atholl Estates operation and in particular the estate’s role as an energy generator. Jamie took us through a very engaging briefing on the history of hydro development on and around Atholl Estates and the estate role as an energy generator and how this integrates into the local Scottish & Southern Energy networks. Operations such as Atholl Estates are key enterprises in our local rural economy and communities. They are important providers of our tourism product, significant employers, drivers of species and habitat conservation, providers of affordable housing and deliverers of a range of other public goods. As such they are a very important part of our National Park community and so it was great for the CNPA Board to see and hear first hand more about the estate’s opportunities and challenges. Running such an operation is a costly affair. For anyone familiar with maintaining old buildings the costs involved in looking after such an important building as Blair Castle will not be a surprise. However consider also the costs embedded in looking after 153 miles of hill tracks, 97 bridges, numerous listed buildings and 260 houses let at affordable rents and one can quickly get a feel for the annual maintenance bill - a fact not lost on my Board colleagues. To meet this sustainability challenge, Atholl Estates have embraced renewable energy as a key plank in their long-term strategic approach. What is notable is the significant and conscious estate decision to embrace hydro as opposed to wind generation. Perhaps an expensive 4 Issue 33 decision by the estate, but one they are very comfortable with and which fits well with CNPA policy. So hydro generation was the theme of the afternoon and the Board were shown two of the 6 schemes on the estate. The first was the “new” Castle scheme. The original castle scheme was constructed in 1908 to bring light to the castle and local businesses, but this was overtaken and decommissioned in the 1950s when the national grid arrived. Then in 2014, utilising and repurposing the old infrastructure and buildings, along with a new 83KW Gilkes turbine, a new scheme was commissioned to address the sizeable energy cost of running the castle. The scheme has been a great success, not only meeting energy demand in the castle operation, but also generating income to support the castle’s upkeep. We then loaded into a range of 4x4 vehicles to head for the upper reaches of the river Bruar for our next visit, the sizeable 1.9MW Bruar scheme. Upon our arrival at the top dam we were welcomed by the marvellous sight of a male hen harrier, who was gracefully hunting the slopes. Located in a very remote area, subject to harsh conditions, this hydro project was constructed between February 2014 and June 2015. Very importantly this project integrated with the already existing Bruar catchment scheme which, down stream of the Atholl Estate project, feeds the Scottish & Southern Energy power generating assets at Errochty, at Clunie and at Pitlochry. So in this part of the National Park, the Atholl water works hard to generate power for Scotland, with the Atholl Estate scheme alone generating enough power for around 1700 houses – about the whole of Pitlochry and Blair Atholl combined. What was also notable for the Board was the effort made to reduce the environmental footprint of the Bruar scheme. Firstly, no new track had to be constructed as an estate hill track already existed. Secondly, significant quantities of materials, much left from the original SSE works of last century, where repurposed and used from on and around the construction site. 20,000 tonnes of crushed rock from on site were used as pipeline bedding – this is significant as it saved the necessity for over 1000 large truck movements on the A9 and through the surrounding community that would have been required to import the material to site, not to mention the obvious carbon savings. Finally, continuing the theme of promoting the best visual amenity in the local area, the estate decided to underground the power transmission cables which export the power to the national grid, a distance of 10km. This cost the estate £50,000 per km, roughly three times the cost of the above ground pylons and wires. Altogether a thoroughly fascinating day for the CNPA Board on Atholl Estates and a great opportunity to learn more about how estates in the CNPA area contribute to our local park economy and communities. Thank you to Sarah and Jamie and the team at Atholl Estates for a great day. With thanks to Doug McAdam, a CNPA board member for writing our guest article. Issue 33 Summer 2019 5 Highland Ponies – their future post trekking. In early 2019 the trekking centre at Blair There will continue to be a breeding closed for the last time to paying customers policy of ponies, but numbers bred will be bringing to an end over 65 years of reduced, so that we are only breeding our trekking.