Hill of Tarvit House, Fife, Scotland - a beautiful stately home with a very sad story

While exploring Fife on Sunday, we also visited a beautiful stately home that has now been passed into the care of the National Trust for Scotland.

The old core of the house dates back to something like the 17th century, but it was bought in the early 1900s and renovated into the house we see today.

The house which is beautiful inside and out was bought by a rich family who that had made their fortune in the jute industry in Dundee. Jute is a textile that can be used for making things like sacks, rope, bags, etc. Dundee in Scotland was quite famous for it at one point.

The family engaged the architect Robert Lorimer to design the renovation for them Inside and out, including designing some of the furniture). Interestingly, we also visited Kellie Castle on the same day (sunday past), which was the home of Robert Lorimer - around 15 miles away from this property ! Before visiting them, we hadnt realised that there was such a strong connection between them both !

The house retains its features from the time of the renovation (~1905-ish) and hence has quite incredible character throughout. I just loved the kitchen/cooker. The line of items across the top of the cooker in the pic above are copper jelly moulds ! They look stunning.

I think thats the original design for the apple iphone above - probably best to just swipe left.

The house comes with a very sad tale of the family who owned and live there. I'm para-phrasing the tour guides, but basically the father of the family bought and renovated the house, and then died naturally (I think) a few decades later, leaving the house to his wife, son and daughter. His son was then killed around 5 years later in the Castlecary Rail Disaster in Scotland, while travelling to see his wife-to-be (in 1937). The mother lived in the house until passing away around 9-10 years later. Sadly, she died knowing that the remaining daughter, who had never married, had terminal cancer. The daughter died 2 years later - and that was the end of the family. They had no immediate heirs, and as such the property passed into the hands of the National trust (at their request).

It just felt so sad to see this beautiful house, full of promise, which only seemed to have experienced such sorrow.

The gardens were pretty impressive, with these beautiful manicured hedges and stunning great decorative pines.

Thats a view from the bottom of the garden looking up to the house, with its beautiful stairway up through the garden. That was also designed by the architect as the same design features on the stairway here can be seen on the main stairway in the house.

The feature above was quite interesting. A very early shower system ! I better that was hugely expensive at the time !

Above is a set of beautiful old sinks in their laundry house. We actually had two identical sinks to that in our previous house. We found them outside in the undergrowth when we bought the place. We managed to save one and integrated it into our utility room, but the other was too damaged to use.

And above is one of the old mangles in the laundry house, used to squeeze water out of the clothes. My wife can actually remember having one of these in her house when she was growing up (and remembers using it !).

The beautiful light, sky light and then ceiling plaster work above, was above the main stairwell in the house. I really love the plaster work on the ceiling. You can see the St Andrew's crosses on the wreath. St Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland.

This beautiful dress dating from the early 1900s was in one of the rooms. My daughter absolutely loved it - she is really into period clothing and history, so this was right up her street.

The rooms really were quite stunning to see.

There was also other parts of the garden and estate to explore which we never actually got to in the time we had, so we will absolutely be making a visit back to make sure we see everything.

The bush above on the corner of the house was starting to take on its Autumn colours which was quite pretty.

And thats the rest of the period bathroom above - it just looks so quaint.

We really did enjoy our visit, and were actually quite close to not going as it was already getting late in the afternoon. It was lovely to see, and as such we were all really glad that we made the effort to go and see it. We will be back at some point soon to see everything else it has to offer !