THE son and daughter-in-law of oil tycoon Sir Ian Wood are believed to have bought one of Scotland's most expensive properties.
According to reports, Gareth and Nicola Wood, a former Miss Scotland, have purchased Yester House, near Gifford, East Lothian, one time labelled the country's most expensive house, for an undisclosed sum.
The property was put on the market for £15 million in 2008, but with little interest in the A-listed, 14-bedroom mansion, the asking price was almost halved to £8 million two years later.
It emerged this week the couple had donated £250,000 towards medical equipment at Wishaw General Hospital, are understood to be working with East Lothian Council and Historic Scotland on plans to develop the estate.
A spokesman for estate agents Knight Frank refused to confirm Mr and Mrs Wood had bought the property, but reports on a local website claimed they had taken over Yester House, which has previously been described as "the best house in Scotland".
The property was built between 1699 and 1728, to the design of James Smith and Alexander McGill.
In 1699, the second Marquis of Tweeddale commissioned Smith and McGill to design the house. Progress was slow, and the fourth marquis carried it forward in the 1720s, transforming a restrained baroque design into a rococo masterpiece.
In 1729 William Adam modernised the exterior and more than 50 years later, his son Robert redesigned the north and south fronts to a new neoclassical scheme, although only the north front was executed.
The father and son also worked on the interior of the house. The main staircase and the dining room, with its exuberant plasterwork by Joseph Ensor, are the work of William Adam. The grounds of the house were first laid out in the 17th century, with formal gardens and extensive tree planting.
The estate was later bought by Italian-American composer Gian Carlo Menotti in the 1970s and was still owned by his family until its sale to the Woods.
Announcing their £250,000 hospital donation this week, Mr and Mrs Wood told of their heartache at losing their premature triplet daughters at Wishaw General Hospital in North Lanarkshire as they unveiled a state-of-the-art system to detecting infections in premature babies.
It will fund the life-saving HeRO machine at the hospital in the hope that it might spare other parents the heartache of losing their children.
Mrs Wood said: "We know this system will save lots of other babies. We used to see parents leaving with their balloons and flowers and their babies in car seats and we prayed 'please let that be us'. But it wasn't to be. This technology means that more parents will go home with their babies in their car seats.
"We wanted the girls to make their mark on the world and for their short lives to have had an impact. In our hearts our girls will be heroes."
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.Â
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.Â
That is invaluable.Â
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