Bob Dylan’s Highlands Mansion on Sale for $3.9 Million

Bob Dylan's Scottish Highlands Mansion, Which Houses a Music Room, Has Come on the Market for $3.9 Million.

Aug 12, 2023By Angela Davic, News, Discoveries, In-depth Reporting, and Analysis
Bob Dylan's
The Aultmore House in Nethy Bridge. Photo courtesy of Knight Frank. Edit by Angela Davic.

 

Bob Dylan’s historic property, the Highlands Mansion, comes to market with a sale offer of $3.9 million. The famous musician bought the estate in 2006. Dylan is an owner of the Edwardian Country Manor on which the Aultmore House lies. Overall, the whole property exists in nature, hidden from the noise and clamour in the Nethy Bridge village, Scotland.

 

Bob Dylan’s Estated Designed by Archibald Merrilees

Bob Dylan's Aultmore House
One of the rooms in Aultmore House with an Adam-style marble fireplace. Photo courtesy of Knight Frank.

 

Dylan is not the only owner of this gorgeous home – he acquired it together with his brother David Zimmerman. They bought the estate for $2.8 million. On the other hand, since the pandemic started, they did not manage to visit the mansion. “Up until about pre-Covid times, Bob and his brother would normally go there for a few weeks a year”, Tom Stewart-Moore of Knight Frank, which is handling the sale said.

 

Stewart-Moore also said: “They bought it because it’s stunningly beautiful and most importantly, very, very private”. The estate consists of the 18,357-square-foot space. Aslo, it has 16 bedrooms, garden views, and 11 bathrooms and four reception rooms. But, the most beautiful part is a music room. Modifications in 2007 modernised the residence’s wiring, heating, and water infrastructure.

 

Bob Dylan's Aultmore House
The entry hall to Aultmore House, its period details still intact. Photo courtesy of Knight Frank.

 

Still, the residence kept some of its original characteristics, such as a limestone stairwell with a wrought iron and timber balustrade in the main entrance hallway. Twenty-five acres of grounds, three cottages, and numerous sculptures, fountains, and marble pavilions encircle the house. Archibald Merrilees, the co-founder of M&M, constructed The Aultmore House.

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The Estate’s History

Aultmore House
The gardens at Aultmore House feature foundations, statues, and stone gazebos. Photo courtesy of Knight Frank.

 

Building started in 1911 and finished in 1914. Merrilees only spent one summer at Aultmore; he died in 1915. Through the following few decades, the land would switch owners and house the generations of British spy Charles Hargreaves and financier John Nivison of London. The estate, long recognized for its historic and architectural significance, can also be seen in the BBC drama series Monarch of the Glen, which ran until 2005.

 

Dylan himself, a Nobel laureate with a career that spans six decades, has ties to Scotland beyond his real estate. The musician has noted the influence of Scottish folklorist Hamish Henderson’s WWII poem, “The 51st (Highland) Division’s Farewell to Sicily”, on his own “The Times They Are a-Changin'”, as well as that of Robert Burns’s 1794 poem “A Red, Red Rose”.

 

Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan and his Rolling Thunder Review play Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto on January 10, 1974.

 

Scotland has also woven its way into Dylan’s songbook, namely his 1997 tune “Highlands”, collected in Time Out of Mind. “My heart’s in the Highlands wherever I roam”, he sang. “That’s where I’ll be when I get called home”.

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By Angela DavicNews, Discoveries, In-depth Reporting, and AnalysisAngela is a journalism student at the Faculty of Political Science in Belgrade and received a scholarship for continued education in Prague. She completed her internship at the daily newspaper DANAS and worked as an executive editor at Talas.