When is a cottage not a cottage? When it's a spectacular, glass-walled lakehouse making waves in 'Heated Rivalry'
The television show 'Heated Rivalry' has become such a huge hit that the phrase 'coming to the cottage' has found a whole new definition. But does that spell trouble for those who still think of a cottage as an ancient stone-built home with a thatched roof? Will Hosie investigates.
What, exactly, constitutes a cottage? It’s a question which I fear modern television audiences may find tough to answer. According to Heated Rivalry, the recent hit television show in which two ice hockey players go from enemies to lovers (and whose lead actors, Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, took part in the Winter Olympics torch relay in January), a cottage is akin to a Frank Lloyd Wright-adjacent building on the banks of Canada’s Lake Muskoka.
Would a cottage by any other name look so quaint?
Not quite what you were expecting? I’ll explain. In the series’s penultimate episode, Williams’ character invites Storrie’s to his cottage so they can spend more time together away from prying eyes. Storrie first refuses, but eventually relents. The phrase ‘coming to the cottage’ has since become Gen Z-shorthand for seeing through commitments.
The only trouble is the ‘cottage’ in question is actually a 232-square-metre lakefront home by Trevor McIvor Architects, which has more in common with Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin Estate in Wisconsin than a humble abode with a thatched roof somewhere in the country. At first I thought ‘coming to the cottage’ was a cheeky double entendre, but that too was a red herring.
It was the architects themselves who named the edifice Barlochan Cottage, presumably to entice buyers wishing to live somewhere cozy and bucolic with all the amenities of a modern house (admittedly appealing).
The property is currently available to rent for around £200 a night on AirBnB, rising to double that in summer, where outdoor temperatures can reach 25°C. Given Heated Rivalry’s unstoppable rise since it was acquired by HBO last December — if you haven’t heard of the show, you can bet your children or grandchildren have — I worry that this new definition of the cottage is about to become the definitive one with viewers outside of Britain.
Trevor McIvor’s firm is not the first to play with semantics. Take the 'cottage' from Shawn Levy’s 2005 comedy, Cheaper by the Dozen 2, a 743-square-metre complex with a two-storey boathouse and more than 200 metres of shoreline which went up for sale at £4 million in 2024.
Our transatlantic cousins, with their Anglophile affections, will happily adopt our vernacular (flattering) and adapt it to make a buck (ick). Just know that if I ever invite you to the cottage, I mean a rustic dwelling with rattling windows and an endless retinue of goats. Sorry, Toto: we’re not in Canada anymore.
You can see more of Trevor McIvor's cottages on his Instagram page. And you can find more Canadian property for sale at our international property search page
