Forget the local election or football results, we’ve been most anticipating who’s going to be the winner of Scotland’s Home of the Year.
Thankfully, that hour has arrived, and the result was announced on Monday March 18 on the 8.30pm until 9pm BBC One Scotland programme.
This year’s prize, which was announced at Glasgow’s House for an Art Lover, went to midcentury bungalow conversion Homegrown Hoose in Edinburgh’s Mortonhall, which came out on top way back in episode one, East. It was at the finals, which were filmed last year, along with The Black Shed on the Isle of Skye, Blawlowan in Bridge of Allan, the Victorian Sandstone Villa in Kilmacolm, Granny’s House in Dumfries and Galloway, and Grindwell Knowe in Shetland.
The winning property is owned by Emily and Robert Hairstans, who have lived there for 15 years ans share it with their children Jackson and Ada and the family’s chickens. Emily was pretty shocked when she heard the news.
“There was definitely disbelief,” she says. “When Anna announces it, she starts by saying the region, and I just remember reaching out and holding my husband's hands because I was like, is that us? It was genuinely a shock, because you meet all the other homeowners until you see pictures of their beautiful homes, and to come out winning after that is bonkers”.
Taking home the trophy was the icing on the cake of a brilliant day of filming.
“They were all so lovely to meet,” Emily says. “I particularly loved Susie’s house, Grindwell Knowe in Shetland and her lovingly curated collection of furniture. Added to that, being in House for an Art Lover was memorable. It's such a beautiful location. In the stairwell there was a Mackintosh quote ‘There is hope in honest error, none in the icy perfections of the mere stylist’ and I really felt like ‘honest error’ sums us up so well”.
Robert particularly enjoyed hanging out with the other SHOTY finalists.
“We’ll always remember that day,” he says. “It was a mini adventure for us to coordinate things and keep it all a secret. We had such a lot of fun, meeting the other finalists, sharing stories and then celebrating into the wee small hours”.
There is something very uncontrived about the couple’s house, which bagged a total score of 29/30 from the judges when it appeared on the inaugural episode of the show back in April.. It’s a perfect reflection of the owners' day jobs - Emily as a horticulturist and Robert as a Professor of Timber Engineering. The standout features include a tulip wood staircase, which they installed, a rather cool cantilevered extension, and a palette of bright block colours in shades inspired by nature. The judges really waxed lyrical about the property.
SHOTY Judge and interior designer, Anna Campbell Jones says: “It typified the concept that home is an evolution, that it grows and changes as a family needs it to. This was expressed so clearly, physically in the home and each addition or alteration reflected what the homeowner’s preoccupations were at each point. The common thread was innovative, playful sustainability, surely an inspiration to anyone seeking to create a home that metaphorically and literally treads lightly on the earth”.
Isle of Mull based Interior Designer Banjo Beale agrees: “I thought it was a lovely blueprint for a modern family home. It felt like the house grew straight out of the soil itself, a rare blend of soul and sustainable style”.
Architect and lecturer Danny Campbell adds: “There was an original approach to a rudimentary house type that doesn't just make it perfect for the family that lives there but encourages others to push the envelope and challenge what design can create at home”.
There were also other earlier comments from the judges that were made on their East episode that Emily found particularly memorable.
As she says, “Banjo said that our house was a haven for health and happiness, because that’s just kind of what we want our home to be. It's just a family home. We love being there. Our weekends are spent working in the garden, and it's just what we like”.
Emily thinks that they may have managed to bag the prize, as architect Danny Campbell was particularly interested in the architectural merits of their home.
“Seeing all these construction methods that are not commonly in use in residential buildings was probably quite interesting for him,” she says.
Since their original appearance on SHOTY, they haven’t been recognised by many people in theie neighbourhood. However, someone at a local business did say that he felt like they’d put the area, which is in Edinburgh’s southern edge, on the map. We’re sure that Mortonhall house prizes will have edged up a fraction.
Of course, as the series was filmed last year, the couple had to keep quiet about their win for a long time. The trophy has been in a drawer until now, but can now be put on display on a shelf in that colourful living room.
Now that the secret’s out, there are jobs to be done, in their ever evolving haven.
“We really want to get more renewable technology and we've got some external repair work that we need to do, including some painting,” Emily says. “But actually, the project we've been working on is our vegetable patch, that's been a big push. It's nice to have the kind of mental space to finally turn away from stuff that needs done inside”.
