The green, green grass of home

Why choose a Tom Jones song title for this blip you may be asking yourself ? Well this is a picture across the fields to the old dairy on the Rosehaugh Estate and an article I read the other day said that by playing songs by Tom Jones to cows in Wales increases the milk production !

We went for a walk in Rosehaugh this morning, mainly to see more snowdrops and it was a bright, sunny morning so ideal for a walk by the burn. We turned left over the bridge and along the lower path , through derelict buildings.
The dairy stands at the top of the field and was once part of a large self sufficient estate. Unfortunately the very grand house was demolished in the 1959 with all the contents sold in the biggest Auction the Black Isle has ever seen.
Some of the original buildings now provide very pleasant self catering accommodation.
One of the owners James Douglas Fletcher inherited the Estate after the death of his father and brother. He was an intelligent man who invested his money well with investments abroad in gold or diamonds in South Africa, tea in Ceylon and rubber plantations in the far east.
He would have been quite a catch but whilst dating, the lady in question declared that her father provided better accommodation for his horses.
During an interview a local historian said that ' he was a funny little man, he looked a little bit like King George V , he wore very flashy clothes, rather outrageous tweeds and I believe he was quite fond of red !'