Barnhill, beyond Ardlussa in the north end of Argyll’s Isle of Jura is under siege. It is the house where George Orwell stayed when he wrote his then futurisrtic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, predicting the surveillance-obsessed and restrictive legislations of David Blunkett and Jacqui Smith.
With no central heating and no generator, Barnhill is too cold and dark to be let in the winter but it is a holiday home on the market from May to October. People renting it are regularly finding Orwell-obsessives peering trough the windows and wandering around this very remote property where they had expected peace and privacy to be guaranteed.
Just how remote Barnhill is and just how much effort the Orwell-experience stalkers are prepared to put in to satisfy their habit is clear when you realise that a rough track beyond Ardlussa delivers you 4-5 miles short of the house. And the usual route to Jura involves a ferry to neighbouring Islay, a drive across that island to take another short ferry to the south of Jura ,with a long and difficult drive to the north end still ahead.
Kate Johnson’s family own and rent Barnhill, marketing it as a widerness experience in an island with around 200 people and 6,500 red deer. Mrs Johnson says: ‘People appear here from all over the world. They usually start walking up here in April although you even get them walking up in the winter time. … It’s a private house and if it is let out and people are there for a holiday they don’t want people poking their noses through the windows’.
But they are doing just that and its an eerie echo of the always-under-scrutiny world Orwell envisaged in the novel.
I’m not sure about this article. I went up to Barnhill as part of a longer walk to Kinuachdrachd in about May last year and the place was completely deserted. The effort required in both the long drive from Craighouse to the north end of the Jura road and the subsequent walk to Barnhill leads me to wonder whether there isn’t a little exaggeration going on here on the part of Kate Johnson.
I didn’t see another soul on the entire walk, and you very rarely see anyone other than locals driving up past Ardlussa, so I’d be very surprised if “stalkers” (what an odd choice of language!) were “regularly” popping up at the windows of Barnhill.
Could this perhaps be a little bit of free publicity for the owners of Barnhill? And surely it would be better for the economy of Jura to use Orwell as a marketing tool to bring tourists onto the island rather than saying “go away, you can’t look at the famous house”? Just a thought.
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How dreadful! Holidaymakers disturbed! What a lot of non sense! This is a non story beefed up to create a bit of marketing for advertisers.
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I’m inclined to agree with loobelia. If you own such a famous house, you are going to get tourists coming to look at it. If you choose to holiday in such a famous house, you can expect to be stared at. No doubt, in their marketing, the owners make a mention of the Orwell connection. I’m sure that will help with their bookings. No doubt some guests become closer to their hero by soaking up the atmosphere and surroundings that inspired him. Let us hope they don’t soak up tuberculosis too.
Yep! Non story. Cheap marketing. Good for them, we can all do with free advertising.
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Great marketing
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Why is this house not owned by a body like The National Trust. It is such an important house in regard to modern British Culture. The Island and ones surrounding could really benefit from turning the house into a visitors attraction, possibly containing some kind of Orwell exhibition.
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