Architect Douglas Forrest has been on a mission for decades.
Now aged 70 and confined to a wheelchair due to worsening MS, he believes his “passion project” could finally have a happy ending.
Douglas first clapped eyes on Wardhouse, a spectacular ruined mansion on the outskirts of Insch, in 1984.
By then, it had been missing its roof for decades.
But he didn’t care. He saw beauty in the building “frozen in time”, and plenty of potential.
Douglas later bought the ruined mansion and surrounding 30-acre estate and started masterminding ways to bring it back to life.
All it needs, he says, is someone with the money and imagination to convert it into their “dream home”.
With various blueprints scattered before him, he told us the story of Wardhouse’s past – and about his hopes for its future.
How old is Wardhouse Estate?
Built in 1757, Wardhouse was the childhood home of Napoleonic Admiral Sir James Alexander Gordon – said to be the real life inspiration for the fictional Horatio Hornblower.
By the 1900s, the family was known as the “Spanish Gordons” after finding their fortune in farming and wine in the Mediterranean.
In 1906 King Alfonso of Spain and his new bride Queen Victoria Eugenia spent their honeymoon at Wardhouse, due to their links with the family.
The Gordons sold the estate in 1952.
Soon after that, the building was pillaged – with a local timber firm buying it then ripping off the roof to avoid taxes.
And that’s how it’s stayed for the last 70 years, the wind whistling through halls once bristling with life.
Ancient castles and Donald Trump couldn’t distract Douglas from Wardhouse dream
Douglas had just finished another project restoring the historic Cullen House in Moray when he and his business partner began looking for other “regeneration opportunities”.
He soon found himself staring up at the hidden gem outside Insch, surrounded on all sides by wonders like Bennachie, Dunnydeer and the Coreen Hills.
After that, Douglas ended up leading a revamp of Keithhall nearby.
Across his long career, he has worked on everything from Sinclair and Girnigoe Castle in Wick to plans for a clubhouse at Donald Trump’s Aberdeenshire golf course – which never made it to fruition despite “several meetings” with the bolshy tycoon.
(His verdict on the former US president? “He’s all smoke and mirrors, but I got on fine with Donald Trump.”)
But he always had his eye on Wardhouse, forming a “masterplan” for it in the early 2000s.
He and wife Carol (now with dog Bella) then moved to the estate, at first living in a caravan before doing up an old barn yards from the mansion.
In 2018, it went on the market for £500,000.
The B-listed building was pulled in 2021 due to the pandemic.
But now it’s been listed again, with the asking price slashed to £300,000 in a renewed effort to revive it.
In the past, Douglas had proposed visions of splitting it into seven separate flats, but now he thinks its future is more likely as one very grand home.
He wants to welcome a buyer who “can take on the project, and then enjoy living there”.
Could rotted interior actually be a selling point?
Douglas estimates that work to do up the ruin would cost at least £1.5 million.
Though it would be a “long-term project”, he says the hollowed out building offers budding homemakers a “blank canvas” to design their very own dream house.
He explains: “The roof being lifted meant that what was left of Wardhouse was frozen in time.
“The rain has rotted away what was inside, opening the door to some really innovative designs for the interior.”
Could Bahamas buyer take on Wardhouse Estate?
And things are starting to look up.
“We have had some real interest… Some interesting interest,” Douglas confides.
“Recently a retired couple from Aberdeen, who worked in oil, came out and loved it.
“They would have been able to do it – but decided against it purely due to the time it would take to renovate it at their age.
“So we move on to other interest, which has come from the UK and overseas…”
Douglas tells us how he picked up the phone to a potential buyer from the Turks and Caicos coral islands near the Bahamas.
Meanwhile, another call arrived from Spain – appropriate given the north-east building’s links to the nation.
And he expects many more expressions of interest to come flooding in as word spreads.
How does Wardhouse compare to other landmark buildings?
There’s a theory that Wardhouse was built to rival Haddo House.
With an inkling as to how he may answer, I ask Douglas how his pet project matches up to the better-known building near Ellon.
He’s emphatic.
“Wardhouse is better than Haddo House, full stop. There’s zero doubt about it.”
Architects through the ages seem to agree, with an “architectural guide to Gordon” insisting that the Insch manor “readily surpasses” Haddo.
Would you like to live in a property like Wardhouse? Let us know in our comments section below
‘We want to move on with it…’
Douglas is relatively upbeat in the face of his worsening health, which has left him using a wheelchair since 2015.
“They can’t cure MS, at least not in my lifetime. You have just got to live with it,” he says.
“But some people have appalling lives with MS, while mine can be… bearable.”
“This,” he adds in reference to his grand plans, “is very much a passion project.
“And we want to move on with it.”
He continues: “Three significant things happened in 1953, you know…
“The roof came off Wardhouse, Everest was scaled for the first time and Doug Forrest was born!”
You get the feeling he won’t rest until his own personal Everest has been conquered.
Find out more about the sale of Wardhouse Estate here.
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