Belmont House

[Kavi Ugl]

So they've finally "opened" Belmont House. Personally, I have a uneasy feeling about this because it seems to have been just another Laird's house.

 

And it seems to be that it's been the same kind of people who've been behind the project and also the same kind of people who officially "opened" it(National Trust for Scotland).

 

As someone wrote a few months ago on The Shetland News its restoration is just a "monument to a turd"(as in a laird).

 

http://www.shetnews.co.uk/component/content/article/36-latest-new/397-belmont-house-a-remarkable-job.html

 

Oh, and when I say "kind of people" I mean the "chattering upper classes".

 

(***Mod Edit - Moved to History & Culture section***)

[zebedee]

But surely an areas history is the good and the bad?

 

I have visited the Anne Frank House, which was one of the most poignant and memorable 'tourist attractions' I have been to. Auschwitz is also open as a memorial and a museum.

 

I'm not sure though, how much information there is at Belmont about it's history and that of Thomas Mouat, but it is certainly been completed to a high standard and is a credit to the people that worked on it.

[Kavi Ugl]

I would never condone erasing history but to re-build and promote something that caused so much misery to hundreds, if not thousands, of Shetlanders just seems like an insult to their memory and suffering.

 

It's a shame that the re-builders and supporters(National Trust for Scotland) of Belmont House haven't acknowledged during this project the suffering that the Laird's caused.

 

It just seems to have been glossed over and that irks as much as anything.....

[Graeme_Storey]

On a positive note, it is now looks like a beautiful and unique place to stay, in a lovely location, and should bring lots of holiday-makers, functions and guests, which should bring more direct income to one of our remote islands?

 

The past was certainly sad, for sure, as it was for much of Scotland, but looking to the future then I feel it is a very good thing to have done for such a remote area.

 

I am looking forward to seeing it when next up in that neck of the woods.

[Gug]

It's meant for toffs fae sooth.

[paulb]

ouch £1400 for a week. but I suppose if you filled it with the 12 people then its reasonable.

[EM]

... because it seems to have been just another Laird's house.

That isn't the full story. It is Category A listed and the reason for that is not just that it is a good example of a posh Georgian house, but rather its remarkably unique low level of alteration over the centuries. Most such buildings were remodelled and generally mucked about with as each generation came and went.

 

As for the lessons it can provide to us today? Perhaps, when combined with a visit to the Crofthouse in Dunrossness, it will highlight the levels of inequality which prevailed at that time in history.

[Kavi Ugl]

It's true that it might bring in tourists and cash for Shetland but it just saddened me to hear the Laird of Bressay warbbling on about it as such a great project when the dark history surrounding it was conveniently forgotten.

 

Gug is dead right, it's meant for toffs fae sooth and at £1400 per week that just proves it!.

 

It's kinda interesting to hear that it's a good example of a posh Georgian house but what does it say when it was originally built by a laird and has now been re-built by another laird.....

[khitajrah]

I would never condone erasing history but to re-build and promote something that caused so much misery to hundreds, if not thousands, of Shetlanders just seems like an insult to their memory and suffering.

 

What happened there? I had a quick Google and didn't find anything about the history of the location. Why don't you fine fellows tell us about it? The Shetlopedia page on Belmont House looks like it could use some more information too.

[Infiltrator]

I would never condone erasing history but to re-build and promote something that caused so much misery to hundreds, if not thousands, of Shetlanders just seems like an insult to their memory and suffering.

 

If the house didn't exist at all, the history surrounding Belmont would lose any link to reality at all and become little more than pages in a history book or two.

But surely the very fact that the house will now still exist for many, many years to come, this will then keep the story alive and by virtue it will become a memorial to those that suffered?

 

Plus, anything that can bring more tourists to Unst can only be a good thing, as well as the restoration being an excellent project to help keep many rare building skills alive.

 

Shame you can't rent rooms on their own, quite fancied staying there this summer for a couple of nights.

[paulb]

would it not be an ideal site for an attraction dealing with that aspect of shetlands history. having a restored house with no tie in to the history of suffering that the lairds inflicted on the crofters would be an oppatunity missed.

[EM]

...something that caused so much misery to hundreds, if not thousands, ...

What happened there?

I don't think Kavi Ugl is referring to anything specific to the location, but rather to the wider oppression by lairds in general, something which was indeed generally the case.

[shetlandpeat]

A lairds house?

 

Scalloway Castle?

 

Bonavista?

 

We all have to face the past as well as the future. Although we can do little to change the past, the future we do.

As will all places associated with horrors that mankind can do on its self it should be used as an example. An educational tool.

[Ghostrider]

I agree with Kavi Ugl. Most of a generation now almost all dead, whose parents, and definitely grandparents knew at first hand just what the tyrannies of the old Lairds were like, were largely of the opinion that the most fitting "memorial" to all the old lairds was to see their Haas reclaimed by nature lying in wrack and ruin in the fields.

 

As far as they were concerned it was the sweat, blood and lives of those who were put in no position to be able to refuse by the laird, that built, plenished and furnished them, and it was being disrespectful to the memories of those involved for those who came after them to benefit from such ill-gotten and "tainted" goods.

 

Yes, I agree it would have been something of a pity to lose such an "original" example of a house of the period, but on the other hand I wonder how many of those who have supported the restoration in any way can trace their ancestory back to tenants of the estate to which the house belonged. I suspect very, very few.

 

Had the intent, when the restoration was complete, been something that served the entire population of the surrounding district, it probably could be seen in a somewhat different light. I think the conversion of Symbister House in to a school was considered an "acceptable" alternative by most tenants of that estate, but if all Belmont is going to be is a "quaint" bolthole for "posh" tourists, and an occasional wedding venue, I think a bulldozer would have served it better.

[GT]

The real repositories of Shetland’s local history and heritage are the local centres such as Unst Heritage Centre, Da Auld Haa, Tangwick Haa, Hoswick, Croft House museum etc. All these are managed and staffed by volunteers whose efforts get little recognition and are constantly struggling for funding to keep going. The money that was wasted on massaging the egos of a few by restoring Belmont and paying for its further upkeep would have been better spent supporting the local centres.