The Inn at John O’Groats | GLM

John O’ Groats and its dilapidated eyesore of a hotel narrowly missed receiving the Carbuncle award in 2010. From this inauspicious position our client’s request was to provide a building which would lift a run-down, monochrome, national embarrassment and re-establish John O’ Groats as a desirable destination. Our response, the Inn at John O’ Groats, offers comfort and a welcome at the definitive ‘end of the road’ location.

The design responds to its harbour front location facing onto the Pentland Firth with a street frontage of brightly coloured gabled ‘tofts’ contrasted with the restored Victorian baronial John O’ Groats House Hotel. Inspiration came from Scandinavian fishing villages – expressing the Norse heritage of Caithness – and the traditional British beach hut. This provides a welcome splash of colour in a sometimes bleak landscape and signals to the world that something new has emerged from the dereliction.

The building is an evolution of the ‘aparthotel’ concept, using unique internal arrangements to provide self-catering apartments which can be let in variable configurations. The building can be let on a single room apartment basis or, using the unique ‘lock off’ principles carefully designed into the floor layout, configured as two, three or four bed apartments each with living/kitchen space with sea views to Orkney and access to communal areas such as libraries and quiet spaces.

Although it would have been unquestionably cheaper to flatten the site and start from a clean slate, the existing building was considered to be an iconic part of the location and a combination of efficient design and construction management with small local contractors allowed it to be brought in within a tight commercial budget.

John O’Groats has once again become a landmark, a point of reference and talking point within the local community.