Smith & Garratt attended the first Listed Property Show in Edinburgh. Our senior surveyor, Hugh Garratt, sat on the panel of experts for a public Q&A session and delivered a paper entitled ‘The Sharp-Eyed Purchaser’ – a guide to conducting a Level 3 survey of a listed building. He outlined the ‘dirty dozen’ most commonly-found … Read more
The earliest building Smith & Garratt has worked on to date is Coldingham Priory, established in 635AD. Substantially damaged by fire in 683, it was re-built, but was destroyed by Vikings in 870. In 1098 King Edgar required it to be re-established on its current footprint and works were completed in 1100. It grew in … Read more
The names of a few great houses come up time and again when conservation specialists get talking. One such is Kinloch Castle on the Isle of Rum. Play-house of unimaginably wealthy and eccentric industrialists, the Bulloughs (mass manufacturers of spinning and weaving machinery during Britain’s imperial century), it was built 1897-1900; and finished, furnished and … Read more
The Historic Houses / Sotheby’s Restoration of the Year Award 2018 was presented at Marchmont on 5thOctober. This was a proud day for Smith & Garratt, for this is the top accolade in our field. The house looked fantastic in autumn sunshine as eighty dignitaries and guests enjoyed house tours and speeches, followed by a … Read more
To celebrate the successful delivery of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Oak Room to the new V&A in Dundee and winning the HHA Sotheby’s award, Smith & Garratt sponsored a race at Kelso Racecourse’s twilight meeting on 19th September. This meeting marked the opening of the new parade ring, winners’ enclosure and viewing terraces – works set-out by … Read more
In a partnership venture, Smith & Garratt and Charles Taylor Woodwork have just restored Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Oak Room and have delivered it to the new V&A in Dundee … to great acclaim. The Oak Room is the rhythmic, dark oak interior to a Glasgow tea room. Two stories high and roughly sixteen metres by … Read more
Does anyone remember The English Patient? You know, the Michael Ondaatje novel made into a fabulous film by Anthony Minghella, set before and during WW2 with Ralph Fiennes as the mysterious, air-crash-surviving, seriously disfigured, aristocratic archaeologist with memory loss? Well there’s a bit when nurse Hana (Juliette Binoche) hand-feeds him fruit from the garden of … Read more
For a project tackled in partnership with Charles Taylor Woodwork, Smith & Garratt have been visiting the ground-breaking, nautically-themed V&A at Dundee all this year, and have seen it develop from a curvaceous dark grey hulk – not unlike a nuclear sub – to towering cliffs with a thousand bespoke concrete ledges wrapping its uneven … Read more
Following two years of work in a secret location, now the new V&A at Dundee is open and the publicity embargo is lifted, we can reveal that – in close and happy partnership with Charles Taylor Woodwork – we have restored and installed this amazing artefact in the museum. After a two-stage fixed-price tender, Smith … Read more
We are delighted to announce that one of our projects – the restoration of Marchmont House – has been chosen as the winner of the Historic Houses Restoration of the Year Award, sponsored by Sotheby’s. We are immensely proud … this is probably the most prestigious prize in our field. The Palladian mansion in Berwickshire, … Read more