A FAMOUS community of holiday hutters, who survive without mains electricity or proper plumbing just outside Glasgow, is close to making history as it moves to secure the £1.75 million needed to buy the site from a wealthy landowner.
The Carbeth hutters were given three years in 2010 to find the sum after an amicable agreement was reached with owner Allan Barns-Graham.
It followed years of strained relations between the principle landowner and the group.
The truce came after a rent strike by hutters, which lasted more than 13 years.
There are currently more than 140 huts over 90 acres at Carbeth, near Blanefield, north of Milngavie, with the site offering an idyllic holiday escape for hut owners from nearby Glasgow and Clydebank since the 1920s.
Included in the land parcel is the old Carbeth Lido and the site of the "fellowship camp" – where the settlement first took root.
If they can buy the site the Carbeth Hutters will be the first community of its kind in the UK to own the land below their wooden second homes.
Meanwhile, landowner Mr Barns-Graham has put his seven-bedroom Georgian home and a small part of his estate on the market after roughly 120 years in the family.
Gerry Loose, secretary of the Carbeth Hutters Community Company, said the sale of Carbeth Guthrie Estate will not affect the hutter's buyout of their separate piece of land at neighbouring Carbeth Estate.
He said the hutters had made a down payment of around £220,000 for the site with a principle agreement made with a bank to fund the remainder of the purchase.
Mr Loose said: "We have to raise £1.75m and that is going very, very well. We have already raised £220,000 ourselves and are in talks with several potential funders, one of them a prominent bank who has given us a principle agreement.
"It's all systems go with the buyout."
He added: "The only way the sale of the house will impact on us is if the new owner has plans for the conservation area. Apart from that, we would welcome someone we could get along with. That is all we have ever wanted.
"In the past we had a landlord tenant arrangement that went bitterly sour but the fact that Mr Barns-Graham and the Carbeth Trust is willing to sell to us speaks volumes about our relationship now. You have to let by-gones be by-gones."
Mr Loose said that, following the buyout, the Carbeth Huts would never become a commercial venture. He said it will be a "learning model" on how to "live lightly on the land".
Mr Barns-Graham, 64, a chartered accountant, said he was selling Carbeth Guthrie Estate mainly because the house had become too big since his children left home.
However, he is planning to move to nearby Carbeth House – which is closer to the huts – for the time being.
He said: "Really, what I was trying to achieve in the 1990s was a slightly different version of what we have now, principally getting someone else to run the huts and keep them going. What I think we have achieved is even better.
"I think that is mainly because we have some first-class people leading the way. They are giving a wonderful lead to the hutters.
"I think it is going to make social history in Scotland and we certainly don't take the huts for granted. No-one should."
Efforts are being made to revive the hutting movement in Scotland with a proposal to build 1000 huts in wooded areas.
Hutting on sites such as Carbeth became popular between the wars as landowners parcelled off land for ex-servicemen and their families to enjoy.
Carbeth became home to a number of families during the Second World War after the ferocious bombing of Clydebank.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article