Ormidale House
This is the best value large country house or celebration house party house available in Scotland - or so say reviewers and guests!! Built by the Duke of Argyll in 1693, on the site of a previous even older dwelling, it is a historic house with contemporary levels of comfort. Just an hour and a half from Glasgow, in stunning scenery at the top of Loch Riddon, it is available for weekend or weekly rent. With 13 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms, it accommodates up to 35 in style. It's been luxuriously equipped and very nicely furnished, mostly with antiques, but with none of them priceless. So you can relax, and so can any youngsters or party goers in your group. Visit Scotland usually rank us right at the very top of their 4 star ranking for excellence, and we were recently awarded “Property of the Year” by Olivers Travels for the consistency of our reviews.
For family groups, special celebrations, corporate parties, intimate weddings, big celebrations, board level strategy get-togethers, or just for getting a bunch of pals away together to catch up - the house is pretty much perfect. We have Mill House and Old Barn and Garden Cottage available if you need to expand your party beyond the numbers accommodated in Ormidale House itself.
92% of recent guests surveyed gave us 5 out of 5 for value, 5 out of 5 for service, 5 out of 5 for facilities - and 5 out of 5 for honesty of presentation. The comment we most often hear from new guests is “the web-site doesn’t do the house anything like justice; it is so much nicer than the photos.” This is broadly deliberate – we don’t want anyone to arrive and not be blown away by the reality, so we try not to over-sell.
With a large private sauna, and a private seven seater hot tub, a full size billiard room, table football, air hockey and darts, a shared tennis court newly resurfaced in 2024, a croquet lawn, sunken trampoline, and two TV rooms with full Sky coverage, about 20 board games, a dozen jigsaws, a dozen bikes, six sets of golf clubs, a football pitch and over 20 acres of grounds to play in, we don't think you are likely to get bored on site. But we are surrounded by gorgeous scenery if you want to explore off-site. We have an abundance of wildlife on the estate, including red squirrels and deer. There’s no light pollution, and the star-gazing is spectacular.
Pets and children are welcome. The house is styled to be luxurious without being intimidating, comfortable and relaxing as an environment, as well as a bit grand in all the right places. Dining Hall, Drawing Room with baby grand piano, and Billiard Room give you the grandeur - splendid settings for fine dining and old-fashioned country living in the style befitting a country pile built for family members of the Duke of Argyll. The drawing room can seat at least 20 at once in comfy sofas and chairs. The dining table can just about squeeze 24. There’s signed sports memorabilia from Andy and Jamie Murray, Chris Hoy, David Beckham, Gavin Hastings and others. Lots of contemporary and older original Scottish Art on the walls. The unique atmosphere is helped by the quirky and fun one-off collectables and heirlooms like old type writers and sewing machines, Victorian knife sharpeners, even a dinosaur tooth.
We’ve invested in new, comfy beds featuring fabulous quality goose-down and feather duvets and gorgeous bed-linen, and fluffy white towels, bought half decent crystal for the table and generally tried to ensure that it's as comfortable and well-equipped a place to stay as you'll find in Scotland, without having any of the formality or grandeur of a castle or stately home. The house has a lovely, relaxing feel.
With a drawing room, TV room / snug with full Sky and 70 inch smart TV, full-size Billiard Room, playroom with another TV and the world’s biggest dolls house, large kitchen with AGA, and breakfast room downstairs - as well as the impressive dining hall seating 22 - Ormidale has sufficient accommodation to cater for almost any large house party. We have laid out the bedrooms to offer real flexibility; three rooms are king-size doubles, one is a quadruple bunk room, and one room is set with three single beds. There is also a family room that sleeps up to six. The other seven bedrooms can be set up either as super-king doubles or as twins, or even sometimes as triples. All bar two of the bedrooms have either an ensuite bathroom or a basin. There are four further bathrooms, two separate loos, and a sauna. Altogether, the house has nine showers and ten wc's.
The Mill House, Old Barn, and Garden Cottage - our stunning steading conversions set around a pretty courtyard with the stream gurgling by - were opened in 2008, 2009, and 2010. They were christened "the wow factory" by the early guests. They are just under 100 yards from the main house, with different aspects and their own gardens. Taken together, they give you another 18 bedrooms. The Old Barn sleeps 16 guests in seven bedrooms, and the Mill House accommodates 22 in nine bedrooms.
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