Mill House, Ormidale - beautiful conversion with 70 sq m reception, 9 bedrooms

A luxurious renovated Mill House on the Ormidale Estate.
We market ourselves as for 14 adults and up to 10 additional children and with rooms on four levels, it will accommodate a large group in real style and some luxury. The main feature and glory of the place is the sociable open plan 80m2 ground floor reception area which opens up from a fabulous kitchen, through the dining area with vaulted ceiling, into a generous three-sofa living / lounging area with open fireplace.
The Mill House was described by its first guests as “the wow factory.” It’s not about the nine bedrooms sleeping up to 22 guests.
It is the stunning open plan reception and living space of 75 square meters, with contemporary kitchen, double height dining area, and gorgeous lounging space with three huge sofas and an open fire.
That’s complemented by the two further reception rooms, sauna and 7 person hot tub, private gardens running down to the river…
The Mill House at Ormidale has taken us two and a half years to restore, and was christened by its first guests as “the wow factory.”
The dining and lounge areas feature the original exposed stone wall and light floods through a large glass archway incorporating the house entrance from the courtyard. It’s a stunning room, and the natural communal gathering place for any party that takes both The Mill House and Old Barn at Ormidale. The two matching dining tables can be placed end to end to enable you to sit down and eat in one place as a party of 24.

The contemporary staircase in the centre of the arch gives a natural focus and pulpit like performance space for speeches! All the reception areas on ground and mezzanine levels are tiled in a natural riven slate which goes beautifully with the old stone walls and new white plaster walls, with underfloor heating throughout the house provided by an environmentally sustainable ground source heat pump.

The stone fireplace (not photographed because a new addition) features the saw bench from the original mill, as the mantelpiece. The Mill House reception space is big enough to seat 60 or 70 for a wedding breakfast, so it is a generous sociable area for any party renting it for a house party or holiday.

Ormidale House is rated at the top of VisitScotland’s 4 star band for excellence; the Mill House and Old Barn were described by a VisitScotland assessor as “a solid 5 star downstairs and barely 2.5 stars upstairs” due to the small size of the bedrooms, and we agree with those assessments but we always stress that these houses are not part of the award scheme and do not have a star rating. Both the Mill House and the Old Barn at Ormidale have been given special awards by Tripadviser and Olivers Travels for the consistency of the 5 / 5 reviews awarded by their customers.The large stylish contemporary kitchen area features a granite work surface throughout, twin stainless steel sinks and two dishwashers, three hobs, two electric ovens, a large American style fridge freezer, and gadgets galore. There’s a kitchen table for eight – expandable to sit a comfortable 12 – and a breakfast bar. The separate utility room features washing machine and drier, an additional large fridge and freezer, and extra storage. As well as the stunning main open plan reception area, the ground floor also features a utility room, a loo, and a separate TV room-cum-play room with a sofabed and 42 inch flat screen LCD TV with full Sky plus package; this room has its own access to the garden and to a sandstone terrace facing the river. An additional South-facing sitting room on the mezzanine floor, again with slate floor and original exposed stone wall, gives access through a pair of french doors onto another terrace with seven person HOT TUB and other garden furniture and to the private rear garden, river and woods. So, with two separate reception rooms as well as the large open plan communal area, the Mill House living accommodation is generous and flexible. Guests also have access to a separate games cottage, desparately scruffy and scheduled for a late 2018 upgrade but a fun space for teenagers, with snooker, darts and table tennis, which is shared with the Old Barn.

Bedroom Accommodation
There are nine bedrooms altogether, each offering double or twin accommodation. The downstairs was described by a VisitScotland inspector as five star and the bedrooms as two star to two and a half-star, on the basis of the amount of space. As well as five ordinary doubles, there are two wee box / bunk rooms, a family room sleeping up to five people, and one room that can be set as a twin, a superking, or a triple. They are all way smaller than the bedrooms elsewhere on the estate, and we don’t make any claims to four star status for them, as a result – they are fine for sleeping in, but you would only have room to swing a small kitten !! We go for the same quality of goose-down and feather pillow and duvet, the same gorgeous linen, same quality of mattress, but they don’t have the space that we offer in the rest of the estate. As a result we usually restrict the adult occupancy to somewhere between 14 and 18 – classing some of the beds and bedrooms as for children. As the downstairs space is so generous, we have added extra beds into a few of the rooms to make the most of the available space and maximize the number of guests we can accommodate. While none of the rooms are enormous, with bunks and “fold aways” and the use of the sofabed we can accommodate a mixed party of 24. The six main bedrooms all have stylish contemporary wash-handbasins. Four bedrooms feature raised platform beds with storage underneath. There are three stunning bathrooms, with wall to wall travertine marble walls and slate floors, two of which feature jacuzzi baths, and a separate sauna and downstairs loo. In nine bedrooms, there are sixteen separate beds, of which eight are doubles including the sofabed.
Surely as well equipped an estate for holiday makers as you will find in Scotland - Indoor Heated Swimming Pool, individual hot tubs and saunas for each house, Football Pitch, Tennis Court, Games Cottage with Pool, Ping Pong and Darts, Large Bouncy Castle, Sunken Trampoline, and thousands of acres of forest to explore.

We have done our best to ensure that the facilities on the estate mirror those of much bigger, much more expensive properties. Swimming pool, hot tubs, tennis court, football pitch, bouncy castle, trampoline, sandpit, play areas, river, waterfall, Lochan, 17,000 tress to climb, quiet terraces by the river, wee fairy glades in the woods - to use the words of an early guest, "Ormidale is heavenly haven for adults, kids and dogs."

We provide a dozen bikes of various sizes, and have twelve bags of golf clubs. Croquet sets, tennis rackets, badminton kit all available. Twenty board games. Our scruffy little games cottage features table tennis and darts on one floor and a pool table on the other.

Guest have full use of our own 22 acres to explore and relax in. We are also very lucky that there is no boundary between our grounds and the thousands of acres of forestry commission land behind us. So you can roam in the gloaming, or at dawn, direct from the house, to your heart s desire.
The gardens themselves are considered pretty impressive by people who know about these things. At the same time as the Scottish architect Robert Lorimer started on the house at the end of the nineteenth century, the gardens and grounds were laid out and landscaped by Thomas Mawson of Kendal, a major figure in Victorian Landscape gardening. Set amidst the acres of woodland, and enjoying lovely views across the glen and up the mountain, the formal gardens he designed are mainly laid to lawn and terrace with hydrangeas, rhodedendron and azalea, as well as reputedly the tallest Grecian fir in Scotland.

Our own woods feature numerous tree species and adjoin thousands of acres of forestry commission land through which guests are welcome to wander. One of our terraces features a Grade A listed sundial.

A tributary of the river Ruel runs through the gardens, down from the Lochen that supplies Ormidale s private water supply. There is a lovely waterfall walk within the garden, and a rope-assisted climb down to a pool for outdoor bathing. The walk up to the Lochen itself is a wee climb, but really worth
it. It s a fabulous location for kids.

We ve added a sunken trampoline, croquet set and football goals to what nature has provided as a playground, and we ve installed three midge machines to keep the other type of annoying wee bu$$ers at bay!!

Each of the three houses has its own private terrace and enjoys the use of a private bit of lawned garden, with the tennis court, football pitch, woods, river, and front field all shared. The main house has the biggest lawn, and the Mill house has a lovely garden dropping down to the river. The Old Barn has a less generous private lawned area by comparison but still has space for adults to sit out and enjoy sunshine and for children to play.

We have been in debate with the council health and safety department over the construction of large wooden outdoor children s play areas. We want to build a big fun adventure playground, to be used sensibly by children of an appropriate age and with parental consent and supervision. We d also like
to build a smaller scale space for smaller children. Neither scheme has yet been approved. We need to find a way through the health and safety legislation and reach some sort of sensible conclusion.

In the interim, we have a full size commercial bouncy castle sitting outside the games cottage near the swimming pool. And there are a thousand trees to climb.