Scotland’s Christmas Home of the Year: Take a peek inside this Christmassy home full of life and laughter

We take a peek in Corvisel House, a B-listed Georgian building built in 1829.

Who:

Lawyer Anne Macdonald, 39, husband Jonny, 38, a freelance surveyor, and sons Magnus, seven, and four-year-old Murdo

Where:

Newton Stewart in Wigtownshire

We received the keys in 2017, when I was in hospital giving birth to Murdo, so it was a few weeks before we moved in, and when we did, we realised we’d viewed it through rose-tinted glasses.

It had a fly infestation, woodworm and dry rot, so that had to be dealt with before the tradespeople could come in. Our journey of home ownership has been very much about projects and renovations.

None of them has been entirely habitable at first – there was the traditional tenement flat in Glasgow, the West End Victorian townhouse upper conversion and a wee farmhouse in Stewarton, where we got married in the gardens.

Corvisel House was built in 1829 and we are just the third owners.

It was built by a ships merchant from Garlieston, John McKerlie, who was a rear admiral at the Battle of Trafalgar.

© Kirsty Anderson

He could see the ships coming in to port from the house. He married into the local laird’s family and when McKerlie died, it went to them. In the 1950s it was sold to the family we bought it from.

The house consists of a reception hallway, drawing room, living/dining room, and kitchen extension.

Upstairs is the master bedroom with dressing room and en suite, the children’s bedroom, a bathroom and guest room, and on the third floor are two bedrooms, a playroom and study.

Outside, there is a workshop, forest, walled garden and, built into that, the gardener’s cottage. We turned our attention to that in 2018 and it’s now a popular self-catering holiday business.

© SYSTEM

We moved in on Christmas Eve four years ago, which was lovely.

Five days later, we had a surprise party for my mum’s 60th, with a band and a Strip the Willow right through the house. It was great to breathe life and laughter into the place and that set the tone. It’s a house that comes alive in the winter.

We’ve always been big fans of Christmas decorations.

Even when I was living in halls of residence, I had the most decked out room. I inherited this from my mum.

She grew up in a Free Presbyterian household and they didn’t celebrate Christmas, so her first was when she was 21, after meeting my dad.

When I was a child, we had stunning decorations, using the forest and foliage. We would have Sunday afternoon crafts, where we would make decorations.

As you grow up, you reminisce about that and try to recreate it, especially now that I’m a mum – I want to make it as special for my boys as it was for me.

I work on decorations from October.

We gather ornaments and trinkets, of which we have a lot, and see what goes with the colour palette of the room, and go into the garden and chop down branches and pick flowers that I dry in our attic.

I have a friend, Tammy, who has a great eye for tweaking things and the boys help, too. They have a tree they decorate each year with ornaments belonging to Jonny’s granny, some from when he was wee and I was a girl, items bought for the boys when they were babies.

Each year, we try to keep the decorations fresh and interesting, and I feel we’ve been really bold this year.

Corvisel House features in Scotland’s Christmas Home Of The Year, BBC Scotland, Wed, 8pm, and BBC1, Thurs, 1.45pm.

See more on Instagram @coorie_at_corvisel