The Bridge Collection

Upon entering the Bridge Hotel and on your left hand side, the magnificent, original wooden staircase made of scotch-pine, swings up to the first floor. All three walls framing the staircase are decorated with Red Deer antlers. These stags constitute the full harvest of one year from the Baden Loch Estate at the top of the Helmsdale River. Traditionally in the Highlands, stag antlers are sold to Continental Europe when the stalking season finishes, ending up in factories that produce buttons, knife handles, lamp shades etc. In this case, the antlers were set aside for biology students and their scientific research. Once their work was complete, the Baden Loch Estate kindly gave them to the Bridge Hotel.

Opposite the stag antlers, is a fine selection of 28 Roe Deer horns, hung in a triangular formation. With the lowest seven horns being gold, silver and bronze medal class with the triangle tapering out to the top row where the smallest types are located.

To the right of the front entrance door, above the fireplace of the Lobby Lounge, is a life size fibre glass cast of the largest salmon caught on the Helmsdale River in the last twenty years.

 

Directly opposite the main entrance and built into the reception desk, is a glass case containing a Blue Hare, a unique animal, found in the Highlands, the mountainous regions of England, the Alps and Scandinavia, that in the summer has a brown coat that changes to almost white in the winter. The animal in question was the largest Blue Hare, the former game keeper of nearby Alladale Estate, had ever seen.

 

 

 

 

 

Walking through to the Lounge Bar, you will see in front of you and built into the bar counter, two glass cases: one containing the increasingly rare Black Cock which is rapidly disappearing due to habitat loss. Whilst to its right, is a pair of the famous Scottish Grouse, a type of moorhen that is unique to the British Isles.

 

 

In the rear of the lounge bar, on display and built into the wall, are two lobster tanks fitted with the latest life-support systems as well as chiller units to keep the water at the required temperature. These tanks allow the hotel to serve fresh Scottish lobsters all year round.

 

 

On the walls of the same room are various antlers of Red and Roe Deer, some unusually shaped, as well as a fibre glass cast of a Salmon Cock Fish with a distinctively hooked lower jaw – a feature typical for the salmon when they prepare for their mating season.

 

 

All of these public places as well as the bedrooms are adorned with oil paintings, water colours and original prints by artists such as Mike Shepley, Mark Upton, David Miller, Roger Lee,  A. J. Makinson, Alan B. Hayman, Archibald Thornburn, Buhlei, David Andrews, David J. Perkins, Jan Tickeff , John Ferguson, John Tricott, Julian Fries, Michael Herring, Mick Cawston, Mick Criston, R. McPhail, R. R. McIan, Richard J. Willett, S. King, Stanley Todd, Steve Weston, Varley and
Wendy Reeves amongst others.

Returning to the reception area and then entering the Restaurant – The Quiet Piggy - you will find yourself in a completely wood paneled room. The 3 large paintings here are original oils depicting Scottish sceneries dating back to the 18th Century as well as two Dutch Masters from the 17th Century. The pride of the restaurant is one of six original fibre glass casts that were made of the largest salmon ever caught in the United Kingdom. This record fish weighing 64 lbs and caught by a Miss Ballantine in 1922 on the River Tay has to this day never been beaten by any angler male or female in the whole of Britain. The cast is accompanied by a copy of an original photograph of the said Miss Ballantine with a framed account by herself of the famous catch, as well as the certificate verifying that the fish is indeed copy no 4, signed by Sir Gavin Lyle of Glendelvine.

Upstairs on the 1st floor landing, is a very large Wild Boar head, reminding us that this beast freely roamed the Highlands along with the Wolf, of which unfortunately no specimen exists in the hotel to date but the very last one was killed only 10 miles from here as the crow flies, some three hundred years back.

 

 

 

 

 

Opposite the Boar is a small collection of unusually shaped Roe Deer horns. Their varying shapes, sizes and texture are as a result of either internal parasites or severe frost during the time when the horns were in velvet.

 

 

 

The next staircase which leads to the 2nd floor on the right hand side is adorned with a very large head of Red Deer e.g a Stag. The animal does not have any horns whatsoever, a rare occurrence and is called a ‘Hummel’. The animal in question weighed 166 lbs and is assumed to have been the largest Hummel shot in Scotland. Hummels tend to grow heavier than normal stags and it is suspected that this is due to the fact that they do not use up all the energy needed to re grow horns every year.

 

Walking towards the Resident’s Lounge, on the wall opposite the staircase going up to the next level in that wing, are two horns of Wild Goats. Wild Goat is again unique to Scotland. These are animals that have gone feral some four hundred years back and four different populations have remained in Scotland to this day. The nearest to the hotel is located in Rogart, some thirty miles south. They live and behave like wild animals and are culled every year like the deer.

 

Going up this staircase, on the back wall, is a magnificent Red Deer sporting twelve points but still in velvet. The animal died on the road as during the period when the stags are in velvet, stalking is not permitted. It belonged to the Kildonan Estate on the Helmsdale River and was donated to the hotel’s collection by its game keeper Alistair Grant.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And finally, to the Piéce de Resistance! Upon entering the Resident’s Lounge, on your left is a specimen of the elusive Wildcat. It was killed on the road and given to the hotel by the National Museum Scotland. On that same wall are nine superb stag’s heads. In the middle is an ‘Imperial’ Stag with fourteen points, as the hotel could not obtain a ‘Monarch’ that sports sixteen points. To the left and the right of the Imperial is a ‘Royal’ Stag each with twelve points followed by a ten pointer on either side, then an eight pointer, finishing at both ends of the wall with a six pointer. Under the stags are three roe deer heads of a very typical shape and size for the region.

 

The four pointers called ‘Switch’ in proper jargon, did not have space on this wall anymore and are hung on the wall adjacent to it. Switches are a genetic problem in Scotland as there are many red deer that only grow those four ends and never make any more points. If during the rutting season two stags are fighting, the ends on the horns prevent and stop the antlers of the opponent to actually touch the body. In the Switch’s case, this does not happen and his straight, long points act as spears. They thus unnaturally injure a lot of their opponents. Game keepers try their best to eliminate the genetic Switches on their estates.

 

 

 

Between the Switches, is a lovely six foot long landscape oil painting of the upper Helmsdale valley commissioned by the hotel with the well known nature artist Mark Upton, whose other paintings are also to be found downstairs in the Lobby Lounge.

Towering above all of this is an original fibre glass cast of the largest Giant Elk found so far by archeologists. The exhibit was obtained from the National Museum of Ireland and the reason why the hotel chose to display it was because the most recent Giant Elk bone finds are from Scotland and only date back around six thousand years. This proves that in Scotland this animal did not disappear because of the ice ages but was most probably hunted to extinction by early mankind.

The centre piece on the wall directly above the fireplace is an outstanding European Moose bearing witness to the fact that these beautiful animals were very much part of the local fauna not so long ago, whilst the two reindeer that are hanging to the right and the left of it, only have come to extinction in Scotland in very recent history. Re-introduction efforts are on-going with limited success in the area of Aviemore. In the corners of the same wall are the heads of a Fallow Deer and a Sika Deer, the 1st one originating from Mesopotamia, whilst the latter comes from Asia and the Far East. Both animals today are endemic to Scotland but have been introduced into this country for sporting purposes.

As the main livelihood of people living in the harsh Scottish Highlands has for many years come from stalking, shooting and fishing, it was my desire from the very beginning, for the hotel to reflect that lifestyle and therefore that part of the local fauna. Our collection is not complete. As mentioned earlier, the Wolf is missing, so is the Brown Bear. However, I hope one day, some of these extinct animals will roam the Highlands once more. This seems to be in stark contradiction to us serving game and venison in our restaurant. But we feel that if nature was used and harvested properly, then more value and interest would be attributed to it. Only once our nature is evaluated and appreciated in the way it should be by us, the modern people, can we begin to set aside the lands required to re-introduce lost species.

I hope you have enjoyed this short journey through the exhibits of the Bridge Hotel and I sincerely hope that this has given you, our visitors, a glimpse and a taste of the richness of the local fauna, past and present, on offer in this very special part of the world.

Christian Gross
Proprietor