Above image: Ferry Inn, Rosneath

Ferry Inn and Ferry Inn Cottage sit gracefully in four acres on the shore of the Gareloch, on the Rosneath Peninsula. William Naylor, the Inn’s owners, is kindly extending a discount of 20% off the listed rate to Trust members and, if interested will give any booking a tour of the Inn itself.

Lutyens was commissioned in 1896 by Princess Louise, to alter and extend an existing Inn to create a dream cottage by the sea in 1896. As so often, this was thanks to an introduction by Gertrude Jekyll. The result was a spectacular example of Arts and Crafts thinking with Art Nouveau influences, described by architect and writer Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel as being where ‘we first feel there is magic in the air’. It is considered to be as architecturally significant as Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Hill House in Helensburgh across the sea loch.

Lutyens’s addition to the house remains today, the original inn having been demolished, although the former ballroom was spared and is now converted as the separate cottage.

For more information see Richard Page’s fuller account on the Lutyens UK website.

Helensburgh is the nearest town, also with some fine Arts & Crafts architecture to enjoy (by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Hugh Mackay Baillie Scott not least). Both the house and the Cottage deliver superb views across the loch and to the hills.
It is currently listed on AirBnB here.