10-Bed Stone Country House & Guesthouse for Sale in Dalmally, Scottish Highlands



Craig Villa Guesthouse, Dalmally, Argyll and Bute, PA33 1AX, United Kingdom, Dalmally (Great britain)
10 Bedrooms · 8 Bathrooms · 0m² Floor area
€614,250
House
No parking
10 Bedrooms
8 Bathrooms
0m²
Garden
No pool
Not furnished
Description
Stand at the kitchen window of Craig Villa on a still October morning and watch the mist lift off Loch Awe, the longest freshwater loch in Scotland, while the Rangemaster fills the room with the smell of coffee and woodsmoke from last night's log burner. That's the kind of morning this place delivers — not occasionally, but routinely. This is Dalmally, Argyll and Bute, and once you've spent a week here, the idea of leaving starts to feel genuinely unreasonable.
Craig Villa is a ten-bedroom, eight-bathroom detached stone country house that has been running as a well-regarded guesthouse for years. The current owners have put serious work into the place — full renovations, not cosmetic touch-ups — and the result is a property that carries the weight and confidence of a Victorian country house while functioning with the ease of something much newer. Solid stone and brick construction under a pitched slate roof. Period cornicing in the main reception rooms that you genuinely stop and look at. A fireplace that earns its keep from October through April.
Walk through the front door into the entrance vestibule and you immediately sense the scale. The reception hall is broad and welcoming, with wooden flooring that catches the afternoon light from the large west-facing windows. The principal sitting rooms have a calm authority about them — these aren't showrooms, they're spaces that have absorbed years of good conversation and late evenings with a dram. The oak-cabinetted kitchen with its deep contemporary work surfaces and professional-grade Rangemaster cooker connects through to a breakfast area and utility room that make large-scale catering genuinely manageable rather than heroic.
The owners' accommodation is thoughtfully separated from the guest side of the house — four bedrooms, a full bathroom, and a large family room anchored by a log burner. It's the kind of arrangement that makes running a guesthouse sustainable long-term: you have a proper home within the house, not just a back room. For a family buying this as a private residence, those same four bedrooms become the family core, and the remaining six guest bedrooms become space for extended family, long-staying friends, or income-generating short lets.
Speaking of income — the Shepherd's Hut in the garden has become a quiet earner in its own right. Fully fitted with a kitchenette, dining table, a proper bed, and a shower room, it draws glamping guests who want the Highland experience without the tent. Book it out on a Saturday in June and it essentially pays for your weekend. The recently installed log-fired hot tub nearby has become a year-round draw, particularly for guests arriving after a long day on the Munros.
And there are Munros. Nine of them within ten miles of the front door, including Ben Lui and Ben Cruachan — Cruachan being the one locals call the Hollow Mountain, partly because it contains a hydroelectric power station inside it, which is exactly the kind of thing that makes Scotland genuinely strange and worth exploring. The West Highland Way passes through the broader area, and the network of local walking and cycling tracks keeps active owners occupied for seasons on end without repeating the same route twice.
Dalmally itself is a small village with the essentials covered: a shop, a surgery, a pharmacy, a community centre, and a primary school. Crucially, it has its own station on the West Highland Line — one of the great railway journeys in Europe — connecting directly to Oban in under 40 minutes and to Glasgow in around two hours. That rail link matters enormously for a holiday home: guests can arrive without a car, and owners can come up from the city on a Friday evening without touching a motorway.
Oban is 35 minutes by road. It's not just a service town — it's a genuinely good place to spend a day. The seafood at Eeusk on the waterfront is hard to beat, the distillery on Staffa Street does regular tours, and the CalMac ferry terminal puts Mull, Islay, Colonsay, and a dozen other Hebridean islands within reach for day trips or island-hopping weekends. In winter, Glencoe Mountain Resort is 45 minutes north — Scotland's oldest ski area, compact but serious when the snow comes in properly, usually from January through March.
The gardens at Craig Villa are well-maintained and offer more than just lawn. Mature shrubs and trees give the grounds a settled, established feel, and the gravel driveway handles multiple vehicles easily — essential for a guesthouse, and practical for a large family gathering. In summer, the garden becomes an extension of the living space in a way that Highland gardens, sheltered from the Atlantic westerlies by the surrounding hills, often manage to pull off.
For international buyers, Scotland's property law operates on a separate legal framework from England and Wales — the Scottish system uses offers over pricing and missives rather than contracts, and the process moves relatively quickly once an offer is accepted. There is no stamp duty threshold differential to navigate here; Scotland has its own Land and Buildings Transaction Tax, which a local solicitor can walk you through. The property is offered freehold with an extensive inventory of furniture, fixtures, and fittings available from the current owners — a significant practical advantage for buyers who want to hit the ground running.
As a second home or vacation property base in Europe, this part of Scotland is genuinely undervalued. The scenery rivals the Austrian Tyrol without the price tag, the access from major UK and European airports (Glasgow is 90 minutes by road, Edinburgh around two hours) is straightforward, and the outdoor lifestyle calendar runs twelve months a year — wildlife watching and winter walking replace summer hiking without skipping a beat.
Key features at a glance:
- Ten bedrooms and eight bathrooms across two levels
- Established guesthouse operation with proven income history
- Separate owners' private accommodation with log burner family room
- Professional Rangemaster kitchen with oak cabinetry and utility room
- Self-contained Shepherd's Hut with kitchenette, bed, and shower room
- Log-fired hot tub in the private garden
- Nine Munros within ten miles, including Ben Cruachan and Ben Lui
- West Highland Line train station in Dalmally village
- 35 minutes to Oban, 45 minutes to Glencoe Mountain Resort
- CalMac ferry access to the Hebrides via Oban
- Mature, well-kept gardens with generous gravel parking
- Period cornicing, open fireplace, and hardwood flooring throughout
- Freehold tenure with furniture and fittings available
- Strong short-let and glamping income potential
- 90 minutes from Glasgow International Airport
Craig Villa is a rare find in the Scottish holiday property market — a house with genuine scale, a proven commercial track record, and a location that delivers year-round. If you're looking for a vacation home in Scotland that can earn its keep between visits while offering your family the kind of space and landscape that changes how you think about weekends, this is worth a serious conversation. Reach out through Homestra today to arrange a viewing or request the full property details — a property at this price point, in this condition, in Argyll and Bute, won't sit on the market for long.
Details
- Amount of bedrooms
- 10
- Size
- 0m²
- Price per m²
- €∞
- Garden size
- 0m²
- Has Garden
- Yes
- Has Parking
- No
- Has Basement
- No
- Condition
- good
- Amount of Bathrooms
- 8
- Has swimming pool
- No
- Property type
- House
- Energy label
Unknown
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