The Grade B Listed former manse for the old Polmont Parish Church
About the House
Kinneil House was built in the late 1730s, as the manse (rectory, for those not familiar with Scottish parlance) for the Polmont Old Parish Church; in fact, the current church was opened in 1845 and stands alongside the ruins of the church building for which Kinneil House was originally built.
The house has been in our family since 1983, when my Aunt and Uncle moved into the upstairs apartment. Dad purchased the ground floor for our family business in 1987 and then took over the apartment in 1989, when my Aunt and Uncle decided to move to Bridge of Allan. For a time the family business made use of the whole building but we moved to online supply in 2005 and no longer have need of such a huge amount of office space, so the apartment became vacant and I moved in when I finished University in 2006. I still live there, now joined by my partner, Matt, and our many cats!
Old buildings always cost a lot to maintain and that’s just the trade-off to living and working in such an amazing environment. However, a few years ago we discovered that the house needed a completely new roof, for which we were quoted £60,000, which was more than we had available. In addition to the roof repairs needed, the ancient sash-and-casement windows all need refurbished and we’d like to replace the wiring and heating systems and re-point the garden walls. We therefore began looking at ways to try and generate the necessary cash from the 2 1/2 acres of land that surround the building.
Our first approach was to look at building houses in the walled garden, something that my uncle had considered back in the ’80s. We had a local architect draw up a scheme, taking inspiration from the church building, and went through a whole consultation process with the local planning office, leading up to the point where we were to submit our application for planning consent. However, when it came down to it, we just couldn’t do it – the idea of breaking apart this wonderful old site just didn’t sit well with us at all. That left us with a bit of a dilemma, though: we still needed the money for the roof, so if we weren’t going to build on the garden, what were we going to do?
I don’t actually remember where the idea for glamping came from, but one day I came into the office and suggested that we consider putting some pods in the garden. Yes, it would take us longer to generate the cash to make the repairs but it had the massive advantage that we could keep the site together and, if we designed them carefully, we would even be able to remove the units at some point in the future, without any lasting impact on the garden. Added to that, it would allow us to bring people into the local area and introduce them to all that we love about Falkirk and, more widely, Scotland. Perfect, surely?!
As it happens, Mum discovered that the first Glamping Show was taking place just a few days after I made my out-of-the-blue suggestion, so my ex and I headed off to Warwickshire to try and establish whether this genuinely was something we could do, or just a crazy notion of mine. We came back absolutely buzzing with ideas and certain that this was the right solution to make the Kinneil House site self-sustaining.
It took a couple of years to refine our plans, starting with the realisation that we didn’t want to go for basic pods, preferring something a bit more in keeping with the unique nature of the building and, to be honest, our personalities. After that, we had something of a challenge getting planning consent and navigating building standards, for whom we had to wait eighteen months while they worked out whether or not we needed a building warrant! Challenges with the builders added further delays, but we’ve finally got there, and are so excited to actually be up and running!