Boleskine House

Manor on the south east side of Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands

The Boleskine House (Taigh Both Fhleisginn) is a manor on the south east side of Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. It is notable for having been the home of author and occultist Aleister Crowley, and Led Zeppelin guitarist and producer Jimmy Page. It suffered significant fire damage in December 2015 and again in July 2019. The house is now being restored and construction work has started as of December 2019. The Boleskine House Foundation SCIO took over ownership of one part of the estate in 2019 in order to manage restoration efforts on the house.

Boleskine House is 21 mile (34 km) south of Inverness, on the opposite side of Loch Ness from the Meall Fuar mhonaidh, and halfway between the villages of Foyers and Inverfarigaig. The area has a history of strange happenings long before Aleister Crowley moved in. The parish of Boleskine was formed in the 13th Century. A Kirk and graveyard were built in the parish around this time. A succession of Ministers ran Boleskine Parish and would travel the area on horseback or on foot in all weather conditions. Minister Thomas Houston (1648–1705) was said to have had the task of hastily laying animated corpses back in their graves after a devious local wizard had raised the dead in Boleskine graveyard. Boleskine House was built on the site of the kirk, which, according to legend, caught fire during congregation and killed everyone inside. Colonel Archibald Fraser apparently chose the site specifically to irritate Simon Fraser of Lovat in retribution for his support of the Hanoverian side during the Jacobite rising of 1745 as Lord Lovat's land surrounded the site of Boleskine. The original hunting lodge was expanded continuously by the Fraser family until c. 1830. All the rooms were situated on one floor, with 4 bedrooms, a kitchen, servant's "attic bedroom" (above kitchen), lounge, drawing room, and a library. There is even a tunnel linking the house to the graveyard. Crowley believed the location was ideal to sequester himself to perform a series of operations known as the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, taken from a grimoire called The Book of Abramelin. According to Crowley, in his book The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, in order to perform the operations "the first essential is a house in a more or less secluded situation. There should be a door opening to the north from the room of which you make your oratory. Outside this door, you construct a terrace covered with fine river sand. This ends in a 'lodge' where the spirits may congregate." The purpose of this ritual is to invoke one's Guardian Angel. It requires at least 6 months of preparation, celibacy and abstinence from alcohol. However, it also includes the summoning of the 12 Kings and Dukes of Hell, to bind them and remove their negative influences from the magician's life. Crowley became infamous for stories of conducting black magic and various other rituals while residing at the house; His lodge keeper, Hugh Gillies, suffered a number of personal tragedies, including the loss of two children. After this a newly married couple moved into the house. The wife was blind, and after a month the man walked out, leaving the woman wandering around unable to see. In 1969 Kenneth Anger, an experimental filmmaker with an interest in the occult, learned that the house was on the market and rented it for a few months.

Jimmy Page was a collector of Crowley memorabilia who "had read a lot of Crowley and  was fascinated by his ideas". At the time Page bought the house it was in a state of decay, but he felt it would be a good atmosphere in which to write songs. However, after arranging for the house to be restored he spent little time at Boleskine, leaving things in the care of his friend Malcolm Dent (1944 2011). When asked why he was chosen, Dent explained "Jimmy Page caught me at a time in my life when I wasn't doing a great deal and asked me to come up and run the place. I never did establish why he fixed on me." When Dent moved into the house "it was a wreck It had been more or less abandoned. There'd been at least one fire there, parts of the building were missing and it had been badly patched up. The grounds, which at one time had been very nicely laid out were gone to hell". Other occurrences, such as chairs switching places, doors slamming open and closed for no reason and carpets and rugs rolling up inexplicably, failed to deter Dent from staying. According to Mrs. MacGillivray, when they bought the house it was in a very bad state. The MacGillivrays "spent a lot of money stripping it back to the bare walls and re roofing it. It had four bedrooms, four bathrooms, a huge drawing room, dining room, library and various smaller rooms". He was said to hate any reference to the house's dark past when it was home to Crowley. The new Dutch owners converted the house back into a private residence and used it as a holiday home. In 2009, a plot on the former estate was put on the market for £176,000 with plans to build a three bedroom log house. The sale also included 140 feet (43 m) of foreshore on Loch Ness. The owner's business partner and daughter had gone shopping and returned to find the house ablaze. They are now owned by the Boleskine House Foundation SCIO which will restore the house and gardens to their original form and then open the estate to the public. A further fire was started on 31 July 2019 in two buildings on the estate at the same time in a suspected arson. The police are currently appealing to the public for any information on those involved. The fire destroyed the remainder of what was left inside Boleskine House and as of December 2019 work is underway to clear the fire damaged material and prepare the building for a new roof. Boleskine House is a Category B listed building, as are the adjacent stables and gate lodge.

Boleskine House is described and recognisable in W. Somerset Maugham's The Magician where it is called "Skene". Crowley considered Maugham's book to be plagiarism and wrote an article under the name of Oliver Haddo (the name of a character taken from Maugham's book) for Vanity Fair as a reply. (For details, see Crowley's autobiography, Confessions, listed above.) In Neil Spring's novel The Burning House the house plays a major role.

Jimmy Page’s fantasy sequence in the Led Zeppelin film The Song Remains the Same was shot on the Boleskine House property.