A lamb in Winton's daffodils. Photo Tony Marsh

The Events Manager, Kerry McCabe, tells us what is planned for the Winton Open Day:

“For the first time we’re having a ‘Friends, family and farmers market’ with stalls for locally made arts, crafts, clothing, and, of course, plants. Visitors will be able to buy personalised children’s clothing, patchwork quilts, jewellery, etched glass and handmade cards.

“The mild weather means that the daffodils, crocuses and spring flowers will be out in force. There will be lots of entertainment for families: dog and duck herding; bouncy castles with slides; fancy ‘glitter’ face painting by Shirley Hamilton; and delicious homemade soup, sandwiches and cakes at Café Winton.

“Visitors will be able to go on guided historical tours of Winton House with its fine Scottish Renaissance ceilings, master pieces on the walls, and links to Mary Queen of Scots, Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Elgin Marbles.”

Entry to the garden and estate is £4 per adult and children are free. Guided House tours are £5 per person and £3 for concessions.

The arts, crafts and clothing displays will include Tigerlily Kids from Pencaitland who make personalised kids clothing, blankets, comforters, bags and T-shirts, decorated with elephants, names, trains or birds. Magghi Mclean’s Puffin Patchworks from Musselburgh will also be on display. She designs and hand stitches made-to-order patchwork quilts. Haddington-based Bands and Beads will be displaying their handbags and jewellery.  Lydia MacDonald will be showing off her hand crafted glass etchings of insects, animals and skylines. Carol Brackenridge from Musselburgh will be displaying her handmade cards and bunting.

Keen gardeners will be able to stock up on plants from Macplants, based in nearby Boggs Holdings. Macplants are one of central Scotland’s largest growers of herbaceous perennials, alpines, ferns and ornamental grasses, and grow on site their highly praised autumn gentians and meconopsis cultivars.

Picnics are welcome and visitors will enjoy walking through the walled and terraced gardens, which are five years into a major six year replanting plan. Most of the plants here are raised from seed and cuttings in the poly tunnel and glasshouse. Planting also generates cut flowers for functions in the House.

Head Gardener, Toby Subiotto, gives an update on the garden’s redevelopment:

“Both of the walled garden borders have been planted with a mix of herbaceous plants for impact and height, with shrubs following on from early spring bulbs. The walls have been planted with old fashioned roses, Jasmines, honeysuckles and tender wall shrubs. Salvias, sunflowers and squashes will provide interest later in summer.

“In the terraced garden, the middle terrace has recently been planted with old fashioned shrub roses, and, in time, will be complemented by plantings of campanulas, pinks, sweet williams and lavender. A dahlia border will be on display and providing interest in late summer up until November.

“An Iris and peony border is planned and starting to take shape along the edges in the lower terrace. The planting in shade at the far end has a more ‘woodland’ feel to blend into the area beyond the gate.

“As a result of a recent thinning of the Dell near the House, this woodland area has been opened up. The areas at each end will be planted with shrubs, with complementary planting along the edges. Fine ornamental tree collections of Japanese maples, flowering dogwoods, magnolia and witch hazels are being built up, many grown from small pots. Himalayan rowans, parrottia, nyssa, and euonymus will provide further autumn colour and interest, creating a middle canopy height in time.”

James & Tania on honeymoon in Banff after their Winton wedding

An interview with James and Tania Wood who had a traditional Scottish wedding at Winton House for 65 guests.

“Tania had family connections to the wider area around Winton, and we looked at a number of castle wedding venues. As soon as we walked in to Winton House, however, I don’t think there was any doubt in our minds: we knew this was such a beautiful and yet intimate venue that it captured what we were looking for perfectly for our autumn wedding.

“We had our closest family and friends with us on our wedding day, most of whom came from around Britain and Ireland, with a French contingent who stemmed from Tania’s parents’ decision to retire to France ten years ago.
 
“The format for the day was rather traditional: we were married at Pencaitland Parish Church, where we’d been attending Sunday service for over a year; Tania wore white and James wore a kilt; we had a 1950’s touring limousine as our wedding car, the wedding breakfast, then speeches and a ceilidh.

“Our wedding party plus their children stayed over at Winton until Sunday and we didn’t go on honeymoon until the Monday, which meant we were able to spend a little more time with everyone.”

What was the feedback from guests?

“’What a wonderful experience – a genuinely Scottish wedding!’, ‘We really enjoyed the reception, and we’ve been to a lot of them recently.’ ‘What a beautiful day’ – these are just a flavour of the many amazing comments we had about our wedding day, which only describe a portion of how brilliantly we think it went ourselves!

“Everyone in the team does everything they can to make sure your special day is exactly that: the most memorable day of your life. No detail was overlooked, and the team really seemed to care how the day went. For both of us, though it’s a cliché, it really was the most perfect and happiest of days – and a large part of that is thanks to the entire team at Winton.”

James & Tania with Winton House in the background

Is there anything that makes Winton House stand out?

“It’s hard to pick out one detail among so many: the stunning location; the wonderful décor and works of art; the well-appointed bedrooms and facilities for guests. But as the old adage would say, it’s the people that make a place, and if pressed I would say it’s the quality of what “Team Winton” give to their guests that make the experience so unforgettable. And that includes Francis’s skills with board games!”

Winton House with its remarkable Scottish Renaissance, carved, twisted chimneys

Can a masterpiece of Scottish Renaissance architecture accommodate a 21st-century family without bankrupting them? Sir Francis Ogilvy, owner of Winton House, is determined to try.

Words by Anna Burnside. This feature was published in Homes & Interiors Scotland in September 2011 and they have kindly given their consent for its publication here.

During the Ogilvy family’s recent summer holiday in France, they visited Disneyland, the Louvre and the Palace of Versailles. Pluto and Goofy passed unremarked but some of the paintings rang a bell. “In the Louvre we passed a Van Dyck and thought, that looks familiar,” says the head of the family. It was. It’s the partner of one that hangs in the front hall. Then another Dutch landscape mysteriously transported them back to East Lothian. Sure enough, it was a Jan van Goyen, similar to the one in the library. Sir Francis Ogilvy, the 14th Baronet of Inverquarity, has not lost his sense of wonder at these things. “In the Louvre. Wow.”

For Ogilvy, who grew up around Dutch Masters and waved to ancestral portraits while sliding down the banisters, it’s the juxtaposition that was a surprise. It was like seeing that well-washed Asda teatowel, complete with indelible curry stain, on display in the Conran Shop. For him, Van Dycks and Van Goyens – to say nothing of Raeburns and Canalettos – belong at home, not in an art gallery.

“WE WERE GOING TO INSTALL ORNATE IRON RADIATORS – BUT WHO LOOKS AT THE RADIATORS WHEN THERE ARE VAN DYCKS ON THE WALLS?”

As homes go, this one is pretty special. Ogilvy, his music teacher wife Dorothy and their four children live in Winton
House, a Grade-A listed building between Tranent and Pencaitland in East Lothian. With its extraordinary twisted chimneys and immaculately ornate plaster ceilings, it’s one of the best examples of Renaissance architecture in Scotland. It has been the Ogilvy family home for three generations and, under one of the most distinctive roofs in Scotland, life continues as normal.

The drawing room has one of the finest plaster ceilings and largest one-piece Indian carpet in Scotland

As normally as it possible to live in a house that eats money, that is. Ogilvy’s parents were driven out by dry rot when he was 12. An only child, he knew even then that the house would become an important part of his life, and when he moved back in, after his wedding16 years ago, the path was set. “I chose to study rural land management as I knew I wanted to be involved in the countryside. I trained as a surveyor, found a practice in East Lothian called Chalmers & Co and took it over 12 years ago.”

The newlyweds settled in a corner of the tower, which is still the heart of the family’s living quarters. (As the Baronet puts it with his disarming self-deprecating sense of humour, “We live in a first floor flat.”) While not exactly a Barratt starter home, it is on a more manageable scale than Winton’s grand public areas. Thanks to Elspeth, Hamish, Calum and Robert, who range in age from six to twelve, the kitchen is decorated with the kind of artwork that doesn’t demand a heavy gilt frame. There is even a vaguely ethnic metal sculpture from John Lewis. Outside in the stairwell, ancient grandees frown on rucksacks, a tiny lilac hairbrush and a Spongebob Squarepants comic, as if they disapprove of the flotsam and jetsam of 21st-century life.

Although the estate, with five farms producing oats, wheat, barley and cattle, helps to support the house, what Ogilvy calls “the fancy rooms” have to earn their keep. Winton itself is used for dinners, weddings, corporate team building training days and whatever 21st-century people want to do in a magnificent historical mansion, including just living in it for a few days. “My children have grown up trying to sleep with bagpipes playing outside their bedrooms,” he says.

“Two or three times a week I come home from work, put the kids to bed, put on my kilt and go out and meet 20 Austrians for the first time. I say to them, ‘This is my house all the time but for tonight it’s your house too.’ It pleases me to see it used and enjoyed.”

This has been his generation’s innovation. “Corporate hospitality was not a thing of the 1950s. It’s not straightforward to find a use for a 500-year-old house. This is one answer. The house may be used for something entirely different in the future. We want to ensure that it’s kept up to a certain standard and that it’s flexible, to allow different uses to come and go while maintaining the fabric and contents of the house. Besides, it’s far too big for one family to hoard. It was made for entertaining people.”

The original Winton House was built by the Seton family in 1150 and then torched by Henry VIII in a vain attempt to impress Mary Queen of Scots. If they hadn’t already got the message, the Setons backed the wrong side in the Jacobite rebellion of 1715. The Earl of Winton was taken to the Tower of London and Bonnie Prince Charlie commandeered the estate in 1745, setting up camp there.

When the Hamilton Nisbets bought Winton in 1779, it was not in its best shape. Happily, they brought the wealth of two of Scotland’s best established families with them to East Lothian and began filling the house with the finest furniture, carpets and paintings that Europe and the Ottoman empire could provide. As the house passed through the family – used mainly as a second home – it was enlarged and ‘modernised’. Woodlands were planted. One owner, Mary Nisbet, held a party for 800 to celebrate Queen Victoria’s jubilee.

The Ogilvys arrived in 1888, when advocate Henry Ogilvy married into the family. He was a keen curler, and his stones are still holding doors open around his former home. Then, in 1920, when the house passed to his nephew Gilbert, Winton under went a category change. Francis Ogilvy’s grandfather arrived with his wife and three children, soon to be joined by two more. At last there was a proper family to climb the trees, torment the gardeners and play hide-and-seek in the cellars and closets.

His own children’s experience is more sociable than Ogilvy’s own more solitary childhood. “For them it’s a massive playground – albeit with plenty of no-go areas.” Snowed in at New Year, they made hockey sticks out of newspapers, found a foam ball and converted the dining room – which has a smooth floor for dancing – into a hockey pitch. They spread out around the house to practise their pianos, violins and drums. When that’s over, they rollerblade around the basement.

The inspiring King Charles Room

Living in a “national treasure” is, says Ogilvy, a constant balancing act. There is always a decision to be made. When they installed central heating, the family considered ornate iron radiators. Then they changed their mind. “Who looks at the radiators when there are Van Dycks on the wall?”

Sometimes the doors are thrown open, as in the 25th September for the Lammermuir music festival, and at other times they are firmly closed. “A couple of years ago Dorothy said it felt as if the family home was now in the venue rather than the other way around, signalling a need for change. We don’t want the place to burn out and I don’t want to
burn out.”

Those lucky guests who come and use the house for a week can live in the style of Winton’s earlier inhabitants. “They walk for miles and miles, sit in front of the fire, soak up several centuries of history as if they have all the time in the world to do their crochet. We don’t have time to do that. But the people who spend hours and hours to make the place look nice love to know that their hard work is appreciated.”

Originally known as Winton Castle, the tower was turned into a Scottish Renaissance gem

Winton House’s remarkable, rich history stretches back over 800 years.  Winton Castle, near Edinburgh, was originally built by the powerful Seton family and has strong connections to Scottish and English royalty, not to mention the Elgin Marbles. After the Setons the castle passed to the well connected Hamilton Nisbets and it has been lived in by the Ogilvy family since the 1920’s.

Over the last 10 years Winton House has become a successful exclusive use venue, a ‘castle for hire’, for hosted bespoke events for blue chip companies from the UK and Europe, as well as for private parties. The events team runs corporate dinners and lunches, conferences and meetings, product launches, private parties, romantic weddings, and even offers top notch bed and breakfasts. Activities and team-building events such as clay pigeon shooting (with 22 times Scottish champion Billy Gordon), highland games with a Winton twist, and falconry all take place in the grounds.

Norman the Conqueror and the Setons

Robert FitzPicot ‘de Say’ fought with Norman the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Robert’s descendant Phillip ‘de Sayton’ was granted the lands of Winton, Seton and Winchburgh by David 1 of Scotland in 1150. His grandson went on to marry the sister of King Robert ‘The Bruce’ of Scotland, and then began almost six centuries of Setons at Winton.

The Seton family was heavily involved in the Wars of Independence in the 14th century including the Siege of Berwick and the Battle of Bannockburn. They held important positions of state: Mary Seton was Lady-in-Waiting to Mary Queen of Scots; Robert, the 4th Lord Seton, was the Lord of Session; and Alexander, (the brother of the 1st Earl) became Earl of Dunfermline and Chancellor of Scotland.

Burnt to the ground

A tower was built at Winton in about 1480 when the Seton’s main seat was nearby at Seton Palace by Longniddry. In the sixteenth century, the Setons were caught up in the aggression of the Earl of Hertford, and under Henry VIII’s orders, Winton was burnt by the English Army in 1544 around the time of the siege of Haddington. Apparently Henry VIII was trying to woo and impress the beautiful Mary Queen of Scots for his son Edward. The thick walls of the vaulted basement survived the fire and live on today, now known as the Vaulted Cellar. This atmospheric room is used for whisky tastings, Champagne and wine tastings, breakfasts and intimate lunches.

A Scottish Renaissance gem

When the 6th Lord Seton was made 1st Earl of Winton in 1600, he set about making a home out of the ruin. The work was continued by his nephew, the 3rd Earl, who engaged the services of William Wallace, the King’s Master Mason. Wallace was responsible for many prestigious projects at the time and the ruined tower was transformed into one of the finest examples of Scottish Renaissance architecture with its intricate ceilings and remarkable carved, twisted chimneys.

The Tower of London

The Seton’s tenure lasted until 1715 when the Earl of Winton ended up in the Tower of London for backing the Jacobites. The Earl’s capture meant that kings were no longer entertained at Winton.

In the Earl’s name, in 1745 Winton was requisitioned by Bonnie Prince Charlie when his rebel army camped on Winton Estate.

The Hamilton Nisbets

The Hamilton Nisbets, who bought the House and Estate, linked it to the impressive estates of Archerfield, Biel and Innerwick. Furnishings were brought back from Europe and the Turkish Empire, and golf was played the estate land, which included Muirfield and Gullane Links. Winton House, like the other grand houses on their estates, was built for entertaining, and played host to some extravagant Victorian parties.

The Ogilvys

The Ogilvys from Angus were linked to Winton by marriage in 1888. The families’ paths had crossed on battlefields for seven centuries (usually on the same side) and in parliament. Following the death of Constance Nisbet Hamilton Ogilvy in 1920, Winton developed as a single estate again, still with its treasures intact. 

Winton House remains first and foremost a family home, now with the sound of Sir Francis and Lady Ogilvy’s four young children. The House retains is beauty, tranquility, grandeur and warmth, as captured in its strapline ‘intimacy on a grand scale’. Private and corporate parties are welcomed as genuinely as royalty were in the past.

A private party and ceilidh at Winton House near Edinburgh

A blog by Grace Holtkamp from North Carolina who held a private party at Winton House in late June to celebrate her graduation from Edinburgh University.

Provided on an exclusive use basis, Winton House is an outstanding hospitality venue for bespoke private parties, family celebrations, special birthdays and milestone anniversaries.

Grace Holtkamp gives the background to her exclusive private party: “we had a ceilidh to celebrate my graduation from Edinburgh University with about 45 guests, cocktails on arrival and a selection of delicious buffet food.

“Our guests were family members as well as university friends and their families and dates. They came from Scotland as well as America, Norway, and Switzerland.

“Months later our guests are still talking about our party at Winton. The young couples found the House romantic, and the parents were greatly impressed by the level of professionalism of the staff and the sophistication of the venue. Finally, the grandparents were happy to find that the seating, acoustics and temperature of the venue made them feel very comfortable.

“Overall, many of our guests commented that the night was special because it brought everyone together ‘under one roof’. The feeling of being in a private home encouraged everyone to meet and mingle, and guests who did not know each other enjoyed sharing the experience of appreciating Winton House together. Many left as friends when they’d arrived as strangers.

Guests mingling in the ballroom

“The dancing and music went very well. The food was delicious and everyone got so excited to be eating and chatting amid the lovely art and furniture of Winton’s rooms. They couldn’t stop taking pictures and the conversation flowed.

“The quality of Winton’s hospitality is outstanding. We had never held such a large or formal event before. Being from overseas we were somewhat intimidated by the prospect, but we were so well taken care of every step of the way that we were relieved we’d chosen Winton.

“Winton House is remarkable because of its history, beauty, and location. Many venues tick all these boxes but are not, in the end, very family friendly, because they lose some degree of warmth and friendliness in their commitment to elegance or formality.

“Winton stands out in contrast to these venues, because the staff are as welcoming and encouraging as they are professional. Every guest was welcomed personally and the tours of the House told everyone its history.

“An hour or so into the event I think most of us really did feel as if it were our own home for the night, because we certainly loved it as if it were.”