From the grand to the humble: Scotland's buildings at risk and are they worth saving?

Scotland’s crumbling buildings stretch from the Borders to the very top of the map, often telling a story of long-lost heritage and changing ways of life. They span once grand country houses, built at vast expense to show off their well-heeled owners’ great wealth, to small, humble buildings where workers toiled hard in once vital industries that are now long gone. There are abandoned Highland hotels which served the Victorian tourist boom, churches designed by some of the nation’s best-loved architects, entertainment palaces, shops, office buildings, mausoleum, doocots, police stations and watermills.

.. Empty and unused, they quickly deteriorate.

Vandals strike, fires break out and vegetation takes hold. Historic Environment Scotland’s Buildings at Risk Register currently lists more than 2200 buildings across Scotland which give cause for concern. Some are better known than others.

Such as A-Listed Kinloch Castle on the Isle of Rum, at the centre of recent debates over its future and listed on the register as “at risk”. Others, less well known, tell important stories of ‘ordinary’ Scottish life. The Corr, at Latherton , Wick, is a traditional Caithness croft complex with a rush thatch roof, smithy, henhouse and laundry.

A unique surviving example of a long lost way of life, it is also “at risk”. Since its launch in 1990, some 658 buildings considered worthy enough to make the register have been demolished. But it’s not all bad news: 2225 have been decla.