Restoration plans for the home of a giant of Scottish literature are at risk after the cost of repairs nearly doubled.
Hugh MacDiarmid is widely seen as a key figure in the country’s 20th-century literary renaissance. His most notable work, his poem in Scots titled A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, published in 1926, has been compared to James Joyce’s Ulysses.
The author’s home, Brownsbank Cottage, near Biggar, South Lanarkshire, is in urgent need of repairs — and the charitable trust tasked with refurbishing it says it will cost more than £400,000.
The MacDiarmid Brownsbank Trust intends to use the home to resume a writer’s residence and fellowship programme that involves the chosen author living in the cottage to write and teach in nearby schools.
However, Denham Macdougall, director of the trust, warned that the refurbishment costs have soared, from £215,000 to £426,000, due to the cost of living crisis and inflation.
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He said that the trust has approached the Scottish government for help with the refurbishment, given the “international and national” relevance of the author, who was also a staunch champion of Scottish independence.
The cottage is empty, and while it is wind and water-tight, is “not habitable”, according to Macdougall. “Everything needs doing — from the top of the chimney pot right down to the foundation,” he said.
Macdougall said he had spoken to the local MSP Màiri McAllan about the renovation and was hoping to meet the Scottish department for Culture in the new year.
McAllan said: “Hugh MacDiarmid is a figure of enormous cultural significance, with works of national and international importance.
“He is regarded as Scotland’s greatest poet of the 20th century and someone whose reach extends far beyond our shores.
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“For those of us in Biggar and wider Clydesdale, we also have a very special, local connection. Much work has been done to protect Brownsbank — and that by many dedicated volunteers, over many years. However in this, the 100th year since MacDiarmid was first published, the MacDiarmid Brownsbank Trust needs urgent support to conserve and restore it.
“As MSP for Clydesdale I share the determination of the Trust that Brownsbank Cottage should be restored and upgraded — to uphold the legacy of Hugh MacDiarmid’s remarkable life and work, but equally to be a functional space where writers of the future can live, work and be inspired.”
Macdougall said that it was important to commemorate the writer because of his “individuality of thought”.
He said: It is the core business of his sheer individuality in terms of forming his own view of things, being able to look at evidence, really assess it, and then come out with an extremely original and individual viewpoint.
“What we have now – social media and . . . people seeing themselves as they are more or less instructed to see themselves rather than working out who they really are.”
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MacDiarmid was a controversial figure — he was instrumental in founding the Scottish National Party in 1928 but left in 1933 owing to his left-wing views.
He later joined the Communist Party, only to be expelled a few years later due to his nationalist tendencies.
Born Christopher Murray Grieve in Langhom, Dumfriesshire, in 1892, he was also known for his journalism and essays. He died in Edinburgh 1978.
Much of his work was written in “synthetic Scots”, a version of the Scottish language that MacDiarmid “synthesised” from different local dialects.
