The A87 #4 - the Tomdoun Hotel

Tomdoun Hotel in the 1950s - photo credit: daves_archive1

 

At the end of episode 3, we'd arrived at the Tomdoun Hotel ten miles up Glen Garry from the beginning of the A87 at Invergarry. 

Sadly, it's no longer a hotel, though, as it ceased trading at the end of 2011. It was placed on the market but didn't sell as a going concern and was eventually sold in December 2014 (for £235k) for conversion to a house. 

I've long been fascinated by the Tomdoun Hotel - a wayside hostelry one would have thought cast into oblivion by the trunk road which ran past its front door having been re-routed so dramatically (see map in episode 3). I made a point of going to stay at Tomdoun (a reminder that it's pronounced "Tom-DOWN") in the late 1980s and I'm glad I did now that I can't anymore. It was everything I'd imagined it would be - a classic stags' heads and stuffed fish mounted on the wall, dark polished wood, log fire and malt whisky after dinner sort of place: for Python afficionados, it was about as woody as it comes. Regrettably, I didn't have the wit to take any internal pictures but fortunately other people had the presence of mind to do that before the hotel closed. Here's a selection:-

photo credit: DJMS Photos

photo credit: qrtzcntrl

photo credit: Qrtzcntrl

photo credit: Andy Jaffray

photo credit: pete "lilo lil" varley

photo credit: Chris Firth

The hotel was built in 1895, one of the many public buildings erected under the auspices of the Ellice family who owned Glengarry Estate in the late 19th century (most of them in Invergarry village as described in this post). So it's not very old but it is relatively unusual amongst Victorian country house hotels in not having been spoilt by 1950s/60s extensions (like the Balmacara Hotel for example): the Tomdoun Hotel looks almost exactly the same today as the day it was completed. 

The 1895 hotel replaced an earlier inn which stood 200 metres west at the junction of the Kinloch Hourn and Cluanie roads: it was probably built around the same time as these roads were (c.1810-20). You can see the old inn on the 1872 OS 6 inch map below. The 1895 hotel stands at about the "ow" of "Tomdown".

OS 6 inch map, 1872

The old inn and "new" hotel stood side by side for a time as you can see on the second edition of the 6 inch map surveyed in 1899 here but it's gone now. I don't know when it was demolished. 

I've not been able to find a picture of the old inn and would kill to see one ... but wait a minute, what's that in a photo on the wall in one of the internal pictures of the hotel above?

Could that be the old inn? [EDIT 24/6/24 - It is. You can see the photo here.]

If not a confirmed photo, there does exist a brief account of a visit to the old inn. It's written by the pseudonymous "Nauticus on his Hobby-Horse" who made a tour of Scotland on a Cheylesmore tricycle in 1881:-

I found Invergarry Inn half a mile farther along the north bank [of the River Garry from the old bridge over the river: this too would be the old inn at Invergarry before the present hotel was built in 1885]. I had tea with an elderly gentleman, who appeared to go in for enjoying life, hunting all the winter and fishing all the summer. From him I gained the following information:- (1) Glengarry caps are named from this glen; (2) The Garry Falls should on no account be missed; (3) Tomdoun Inn is a good one, and situated in the finest valley in Scotland; (4) The roads on the west coast would be too hilly for my tricycle.

7.30 [pm]. All the inhabitants turned out to see me start, a tricycle never having been seen here before. [After describing a stop at the Garry Falls, Nauticus resumes at the west end of Loch Garry] The road, which from Spean Bridge had consisted of hard sand, now became soft, and covered with fresh metal [gravel]. Hereabouts I began to look out for the "finest valley in Scotland" but bleaker and bleaker became the way, until Tomdoun, a solitary inn, was reached at 9.30. It was being enlarged [this isn't referring to building the new hotel which wasn't till twelve years later], which was unfortunate, but as I was the only lodger I managed pretty well. While they were preparing my meal I took a survey of this wild place among the hills, and while watching the national game of "Throwing the Hammer" I felt that I was really in the Highlands.

[Next morning] Although I had arrived late, I decided to make an early start in the morning. I was called at seven; but as the festive rat had kept me awake the best part of the night, I gladly availed myself of the excuse that it was raining to turn over on the other side and "drive my pigs to market" again."

I don't know what the reference to the "festive rat" means. Did he literally mean he was kept awake by rats scurrying about or is it another metaphor like "driving your pigs to market" (snoring - which I didn't know)?

Advert in Inverness Courier, 7 February 1896 - British Newspaper Archive

 

Nauticus the tricyclist's host at the Tomdoun Inn was Peter Grant who would have rented it from the Ellices of Glengarry Estate. The estate built the new hotel (for £7,000 - about £650k in today's money) and advertised for a new tenant for it (see above) but Peter Grant seems to have secured the lease anyway. He died not long after and was followed in the tenancy of the hotel by his son, another Peter, who had it until his death in 1940. Thereafter it was managed by Peter the younger's daughter until, I believe, the 1960s - three generations over about 80-90 years is quite an achievement.

During the earlier part of the 20th century, the "new" hotel appears to have been more like a sort of hunting lodge open to the public than a typical wayside inn or hotel. Only open during the fishing and stag stalking seasons, J M Barrie was a regular visitor with the Llewelyn Davies brothers who were his wards after their parents died and the inspiration for the characters of Peter Pan. I found the following quotes in a biography of one of the brothers:-

"[The Tomdoun Hotel was] both a family home and provided accommodation for the staff that worked on the farm the Grants owned. It also housed the telegraph office. There were four or five 'suites' to let, guests had a bedroom and adjoining sitting room and shared a bathroom/WC. Meals were provided, either in the private rooms or in the dining room. You took what was offered. There was no bar but drinks could be taken in the drawing room."

and

"[The menu consisted of] mutton broth, trout and then mutton, which one could seldom masticate with any ease. So far as a bath was concerned, and you were fortunate enough to get there first, you might manage to find a trickle of tepid water and God help those who followed. The bedrooms were always spotlessly clean but had the oldest iron bedsteads and the mattresses so hard that [it was] only through real tiredness after a hard day's fishing that sleep came one's way."

It doesn't sound a great improvement over what Nauticus the tricyclist had to put up with in the old inn!

Fishing the Tomdoun water - photo credit: Cap'n Fishy

Trout fishing rather than salmon was the speciality on the Tomdoun Hotel's five miles of private fishing on the River Garry. For eight years (1957-65) it held the record for the biggest brown trout caught in Britain at 17lbs 8oz. It was preserved in a glass case in the hotel and its record was broken by an 18lbs 2oz fish caught just downstream on Loch Garry. (The current record is 30lbs 8oz caught on Loch Awe.)

Tomdoun in December 2019 - photo credit: Allan Maciver

So, closed since 2011, what of the Tomdoun Hotel today? Well it's back as an even more upmarket hunting lodge. Owned together with the neighbouring 9,800 acre East Glenquoich Estate since 2019 by Richard Tuxford, it's been rebranded Tomdoun House and Estate and is available to rent for huntin', fishin' & shootin' parties - there's no tariff on the estate's website so I guess if you need to ask, you can't afford it! As you can see from the photo above, externally there's no change but internally it's had quite the makeover:

Tomdoun in the 2020s - photo credit: Tomdoun Estate

More pictures here. No sign of that photo of the old inn. Or the record trout. I wonder what became of them?