A house with a glittering history!

A lovely day in Oban today, but a band of heavy cloud out to the west ensured that Mull had a grey day - Mrs M is staying there and was surprised to hear that we had sunshine most of the day!

I didn't get up very early as I was feeling a bit grotty with a cold, so it was after an early lunch that I went down to the town; it's the last day of the Winter Festival and I chatted to a few folk, bought the odd thing at the craft fair and even had an ice-cream! By the time I'd done all that the sun was sinking down into the cloud so I'm having to use one of the photographs I took on my walk down.

I've probably Blipped this before, but it's a house called Greystones, formerly the Oban Maternity Hospital. I probably can't do better than to quote the history from their website:

"Greystones was built in 1885 on the site of the Craigard Hotel, which had been partly destroyed by fire. It was built by a Mr Hugh Cowan, Chairman of the Central Diamond Mining Company in South Africa. The house was named Kimberley House after the famous Kimberley diamond mines which Mr Cowan’s company operated.
 
In 1954, it traded briefly as a hotel before being sold to Western Regional Hospitals Board in 1955. It was converted into a hospital, known as Glen Euchar (House of the Keys), and was used as Oban’s maternity hospital until 1995. It was sold in 1997 and converted to a hotel. It was renamed The Kimberley Hotel before changing name again in 2012 to Greystones, as a reference to the colour of un-cut diamonds. Greystones is built in the Scottish baronial style and is Category B listed."

So there you have it!