At home in the Hebrides

Imagine a journey in the depths of winter from London to the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides. EasyJet to Glasgow, Loganair to Stornoway, then an hour and half’s drive across a landscape of peat bogs and glassy lochans, as if the island cannot decide which dimension it belongs to: sea or rock? Past the ferry port at Tarbert, the darkness thick as treacle, the road narrows to a single track. Finally we arrive at a house named Caochan na Creige. The Gaelic phrase means “little quiet one by the rock”.

Building the “little quiet one” in surroundings that share a latitude with Alaska requires determination one might describe as Hebridean, particularly as this is a place where access to building supplies is dependent upon ferry times and the weather, and where the Sabbath is still quietly observed. “Within a few weeks of us starting on site, there were nine named storms, gusting 120 miles per hour,” says Caochan na Creige’s Scottish architect Eilidh Izat, 35. “We were renting a stone cottage and the walls were shaking. It was a humbling experience.” 

Izat’s husband and business partner Jack Arundell, along with her brother Alasdair Izat, oversaw the day-to-day construction alongside stonemason Dan Maca...
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