gallery

K H Eadie 19th Century
The Green Hotel Originally known as the Kinross Green Inn , Kinross 1861

signed inscribed and dated 

pencil and watercolour
20 x 33 cm.
Notes

The Green Hotel Golf and Leisure Resort is situated in the peaceful town of Kinross, surrounded by 5000 acres of beautiful Perthshire countryside. Ideally located within central Scotland, Edinburgh and Perth are just a short 30 minute drive away with motorway access all the way to Kinross.Dating back to the 18th and 19th Century, The Green was originally a traditional coaching inn, with the stage coaches which ran between Queensferry and Perth changing horses right here at The Green. The liveried horses were stabled in the buildings next to us on Green Road. Nowadays of course, the resort is a modern affair with a variety of leisure activities on offer.

The Green Hotel Originally known as the Kinross Green Inn, the Green Hotel’s earliest recorded inn keeper was James Skelton, whose son became a celebrated Sheriff of Kinross. It was Skelton who first ran a mail gig between Queensferry and Kinross sometime between 1785 and 1790, but the inn had been in their hands for some time before that. A writer in Ruddiman’s Weekly Magazine in 1772 gave the inn a rave
review suggesting that “ None is more famous in Scotland for skill in cooking in all its branches than Mrs Skelton, Kinross Green Inn.” Three years earlier in 1769, after a summer tour of Scotland, the celebrated traveller Thomas Pennant noted that “he lay at a good inn, a single house,
about half a mile north of Kinross.” Situated by the Green of Kinross, where burgh fairs and festivities were held, the Kinross Green Inn was managed from about 1790 till his death in 1816 by Donald ‘Dunkie’Donaldson whose business prospered after the arrival in July 1798 of the first mail coach linking Edinburgh and Aberdeen via Queensferry, Kinross, Perth and Dundee. At that time, before the development of the High Street north of Piper Row, the inn was situated in open countryside to the north of Kinross. Rebuilt in 1829, the inn was bought by the Morrisons of Finderlie who maintained it as a private house until 1879 when Robert Harris, previously owner of the Kirklands Hotel, and his son James were granted a leaseto run the building as a hotel once again. They renamed it ‘The Green’ and eventually James Harris bought the hotel
outright in 1895. By then the coaching days were long gone but the railway had arrived, bringing anglers to fish for trout on Loch Leven.

Robert Harris, who died in 1887, had been a champion fisherman and with the development of the pier by Sir Basil Montgomery from 1902, business was brisk as anglers flocked to Kinross during the summer months. Having witnessed a tenfold increase in the number of club
fishing competitions from 27 in 1873 to 266 in 1933, it was no wonder that Sir Basil had decided to buy the hotel in 1926. The ledgers and day books of The Green Hotel (Kinross) Ltd., recently acquired by Kinross (Marshall) Museum, provide an insight into how the business was run
and who came to stay at the hotel. In the 1930s, for example, a licence for the hotel Daimler cost £5 5s and you could have rubbed shoulders with celebrities such as the noted writer and art critic Sir Sachaverell Sitwell and members of the Mitford family who visited Kinross in August. Extended in the 1920s and again in the 1990s, when it received a Kinross-shire Civic Trust architectural award, the greater part of The Green Hotel still comprises the 1829 reconstruction as a purpose-built coaching inn with its distinctive 16th-century styling of diagonally set chimneys
and broad mullioned windows.

Kinross is a burgh in Perth and Kinross, Scotland, around 13 miles (21 kilometres) south of Perth and around 20 miles (32 kilometres) northwest of Edinburgh. It is the traditional county town of the historic county of Kinross-shire. Kinross's origins are connected with the nearby Loch Leven and its islands whose history goes back to the 5th century AD. Kinross developed as a staging post on the Great North Road from North Queensferry to Perth. In time, local industry developed and by the early 18th century the town had grown to a population of around 600 people. By the mid-19th century, a thriving wool weaving industry had emerged. Kinross Town Hall was completed in 1841.

The site of the original Pre-Reformation parish church and churchyard are located down a small wynd overlooking Loch Leven, a little away from the town. The church was dedicated to St. Serf and was under control of Dunfermline Abbey. Noteworthy ministers included John Colden from 1593 to 1640 and his son George Colden who served until 1665. The notorious Henry Christie was minister of Kinross 1679–89. Rev Robert McGill served 1698 until 1726 and recorded supernatural events in the manse in 1718. Rev Robert Stark was initially unpopular but served 1732 to 1783.

Kinross was originally linked by railway to Perthshire, Fife and Clackmannanshire until the rail links gradually disappeared. At one time three independent railway companies had their termini at the town. The Fife and Kinross Railway came from the east, the Kinross-shire Railway came from the south and The Devon Valley Railway came from the west. Kinross Junction railway station once stood on the line between Perth and Edinburgh, which was closed to make way for construction of the M90 motorway.[6] Since this time, many people working within a commuting radius of Kinross have settled in the town owing to its central location and local amenities. Locals and Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) have also asked the Scottish Government to publish a Feasibility Study into re-establishing the Perth–Edinburgh Direct Rail Link.As of 2021, no such document has been published.

Kinross is served by local and long-distance bus services including Megabus services M90, M91 and M92 which call at the Sainsbury's Park & Ride site off Junction 6 of the M90 motorway. The burgh is located on the shores of Loch Leven. There are boat trips around the loch and to Loch Leven Castle where Mary, Queen of Scots was held prisoner in 1567. Up to 2014 the annual T in the Park music festival. which was officially replaced by TRNSMT festival in Glasgow Green, was held nearby, at the former RAF Balado Bridge airfield. RAF Balado Bridge was also the locale of a now decommissioned NATO ICBM early warning radar and up until the late 1950s was a training base for the Royal Air Force.