Bob Dylan makes £2m profit after selling Scottish Highlands home
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Bob Dylan has made a £2 million profit after selling his country estate in the Scottish Highlands.
The Nobel Prize-winning musician paid £2.2 million for the 25-acre Aultmore House in 2006 with his brother, David Zimmerman.
The 16-bedroom stately home, near Nethy Bridge in Cairngorms National Park, was listed for sale earlier this year for offers of more than £3 million.
It has been sold for more than £4.2 million to whisky producer Angus Dundee Distillers, which owns the Tomintoul Distillery in the Cairngorms and Glencadam Distillery in Brechin.
The Blowin’ in the Wind singer and his brother stayed in the Highlands retreat for a few weeks every year but had not visited since the coronavirus pandemic.
‘They bought it as a base’
Tom Stewart-Moore of Knight Frank estate agents, said: “They bought it as a base. They’ve not been able to use it in recent years and that’s the reason for the sale.”
The Edwardian mansion has several reception rooms, including a music room, 11 bathrooms and a further seven attic bedrooms. The grounds feature cottages, a large greenhouse, walled garden, follies, a fountain and a croquet lawn.
It was built between 1911 and 1914 as a holiday home for businessman Archibald Merrilees, who founded Russia’s first department store, M&M, in the mid-19th century. He was forced into a sale after the family’s fortunes were hit by the Russian Revolution in 1922.
Aultmore was later used as a Second World War convalescent hospital and a finishing school owned by a New Zealand-born spy who survived imprisonment in Colditz.
‘Used Highlands imagery in his work’
Dylan, 82, has previously used imagery from the Highlands in his work, including in the song named after the area on Time Out of Mind, the 1997 Grammy Award-winning album. “My heart’s in the Highlands wherever I roam / That’s where I’ll be when I get called home,” he sang.
In 2004, Dylan was awarded an honorary doctorate in music from the University of St Andrews.
He was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”.
Aultmore featured in the television drama Monarch of the Glen and became a popular wedding venue before it was purchased by Dylan.
