House proud (House of Bruar)

After almost 15 years of purveying the best of Scotland’s edible and wearable produce, House of Bruar is becoming a legend in its own lunchtime. Even people who hate shopping make the pilgrimage there, discovers Kate Patrick

The phone springs to life. It is a text from someone who would rather be stuck in an immigration queue at Miami airport than out shopping for his wardrobe.

Driving down A9. Stopped at Bruar. Bought fabulous cashmere jacket! Wonderful!

This is a turn-up for the books. He doesn’t usually use words like ‘fabulous’ or ‘wonderful’ – not in connection with the experience of buying clothes, anyway, and certainly not in texts. Unless the exclamation marks are ironic, something has clearly brought about a dramatic change of outlook.

What’s happened, of course, is that he has been utterly seduced by the chic but homely charms of the House of Bruar, the ‘Harrods of the north’ – although I’ve always thought that this label was rather unfair to Bruar. It may be the purveyor of high quality clothes, goods, food and services in a vaguely Harrods-like fashion, but it is so gloriously and weirdly remote, in its Highland roadside location somewhere north of Pitlochry, as to be the complete antithesis of a glitzy Knightsbridge department store.

With its cluster of white-painted buildings and round tower, Bruar could be the little brother – or perhaps steading – to Blair Castle, the great white beacon of the Atholl Estate that stretches as far as the eye can see in these parts.

Without the comparison of Blair, it could equally pass for a Victorian-Baronial sporting lodge, which was the intention of Mark and Linda Birkbeck when they cleared the site of an earlier hotel and constructed their .....

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By Kate Patrick

Section : Best of Scotland

Page number : 46