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Demolition begins at ruined Jimmy Savile cottage

Peter Jolly A vandalised one-storey white house with no roof is surrounded by a wire fence. There is a full skip out the front. The house sits in a scenic area with hills in the background.Peter Jolly
The house has been vandalised since Jimmy Savile was exposed for his crimes

Demolition work has started at a cottage in the Highlands formerly owned by Jimmy Savile.

Savile, uncovered as one of Britain's most prolific sex offenders, owned Allt-na-Reigh cottage in Glen Coe from 1998 until his death in 2011.

The property on the A82 has been repeatedly vandalised since details of his abuse emerged, and last month was damaged in a fire.

The site's new owner has been granted planning permission to demolish the existing single-storey house and replace it with a new four-bedroom, one-and-a-half storey house.

Highland councillors unanimously approved the demolition plans last June.

The proposed redevelopment includes honouring another of the cottage's former owners - the celebrated Scottish climber and inventor Dr Hamish MacInnes.

Dr MacInnes, who died in 2020, invented ice axes and also a stretcher that is used by mountain rescue teams all over the world.

The outbuildings where the climber worked on his creations are to be redeveloped as an ancillary dwelling and named Hamish House.

The property has a long history and over the years it served as a house on a croft and as a road workers' cottage.

It is one of only six houses along a 10-mile stretch of the A82 through Glen Coe.

The cottage's name, Allt-na-Reigh, roughly translates from its mangled Gaelic as "burn of the slope", a reference to the stream that rushes close by and down under a bridge on the A82.

It neighbours the towering Three Sisters ridges of the 1,150m (3,773ft) mountain Biden nam Bian.