LIMEWASHED the colour of ripened barley, Ballone Castle stands dramatically on a clifftop viewed across the fields of Tarbat, the wing-shaped peninsula that juts into the Moray Firth. When Lachie and Annie Stewart came here in January 1989, they found a roofless shell inhabited by cows. An architect and a textile designer, who had met at Edinburgh College of Art and established their design company ANTA in 1984, the couple had been looking for a castle in the Highlands to restore as a home and they were immediately drawn to the setting and unaltered form of this 16th-century tower house (Fig 2). They called on the owner, who, on hearing that Mr Stewart came from Lochalsh, invited them in.
The farmer liked them because they wanted to make a home, rather than a hotel, so he agreed to sell
The farmer had been approached by several potential restorers, but he liked the Stewarts because they wanted to make a home, rather than a hotel, so he agreed to sell. They were living in London, where they had restored a house in Spitalfields, but, on becoming the new owners in 1990, they moved with their young family into a
