Yes, brand new. You have to keep telling yourself that. As I disembark at the jetty, I find the place is just being finished by Mackintosh's crack team of trusted English and Scottish builders. These, like the house itself, are not your average product. I soon discover that they are craftsmen who are as likely to sit down with a glass of wine to discuss the finer points of design as they are to trundle barrowloads of concrete about. Despite this, the first impression is that they must be a restoration squad. Outside or in, the house just does not feel remotely new.

A central round three-storey tower is flanked by two lower wings in different styles and - you'd be forgiven for assuming, if you didn't know otherwise - of different dates. It looks as if the central bit is medieval, perhaps, while the narrow north wing with its curving corner was maybe added in the 17th century. The foursquare south wing looks very 1900s. And someone seems to have grafted on a curving ground-floor front extension to the tower at some point, possibly mid 20th century. All parts are faced with the same plentiful hard local rubble stone, either used as found or chiselled roughly into shape.