Geograph - photograph every grid square

The house and outbuilding at Ardoch are empty and decaying. They are located in an area which was once the site of a sizeable community. The locally produced book “History with boots on” provides the following description: “Ardoch (the high field) was one of the biggest clachans on Gairnside boasting fourteen “fire” houses (with a chimney), a shop and a school, probably seasonal.”

Robert Smith, in his book “The Royal Glens” described Ardoch in more forthright terms: “Ardoch was a hamlet with about fourteen "fire-houses" - houses with chimneys. It was "a nasty guttery (muddy) place". "The hooses in Ardoch was stragglin' back an' fore as if they had fa'an oot o' the air," said one resident. They had a school there, but it was "just a reeky hole". It is still a guttery place. The track that runs along the slopes of Mammie to Ardoch is lined with the ruins of the "fire-houses", but there is nothing to tell which was the school, the "reeky hole". The only building left is Ardoch itself, but it has become a shell, its empty windows staring sightlessly across the Gairn to Geallaig Hill”