Hero hotel
Rodel House, overlooking a natural harbour near the southernmost tip of the Isle of Harris, was built in 1781 for Capt Alexander MacLeod, who had recently returned from a profitable spell in India and the Far East.
Gazing out from certain windows on the first and second floors, you can, weather permitting, make out the distant silhouette of the Isle of Skye. There lies Dunvegan, seat of Clan MacLeod, to which the captain belonged, and the oldest continuously inhabited castle in Scotland.
For the best part of 700 years, the MacLeods’ territories included not only Skye, but also the islands of Raasay, Lewis, Harris and the archipelago of St Kilda. Dunvegan, on Skye, was always their political base and centre of gravity. Yet Rodel, on Harris, was also a place of particular significance to them — their spiritual home, you might say.
Rodel House had its ups and downs over the following centuries. It was in a sadly run-down state when it was purchased in 2016 by Anderson Bakewell, an American musicologist with a deep personal interest in Harris, having been a regular visitor to the island for more than 50 years.
Bakewell and his wife, Francine Stone, working closely with mostly local architects, designers and craftsmen, over-saw the meticulous restoration of the house. In its materials, textures, colours and countless small, but telling details, it had to remain respectful of its original identity, without becoming a pastiche or a simulacrum.
It also had to work in the present. If it’s modish Scandi-Scots chic you seek, you must seek it elsewhere. Rodel House is a hymn to the specifically and authentically Hebridean. Hence the abundance of larch and pine, for instance, the Georgian panelling and handmade shutters, the wool, the tweed, the sheepskin.
I remember chatting to Bakewell about the tone of the place, the note that he and his wife wished it to strike. He said he was toying with the idea of taking a motto from a song by the great 17th-century bardess Mary MacLeod, An Crònin or The Croon. The phrase he had in mind, ‘cosgail ri cuiart’, is difficult to translate. Scottish Gaelic is a living language — it’s still the first language of Harris and of the other Outer Hebridean islands — and the sense of the words has shifted over the centuries since the song was composed.
Essentially, it concerns a mode of hospitality in which heart-felt generosity, as much sentimental as material, is of the essence. ‘Lavish to visitors’ is perhaps as close an approximation to the sense of the phrase as we can get in present-day English. Not merely comfortable, that is, but good for the soul.
Today, Rodel House has four bedrooms, sleeping up to eight adults and two children, with additional rooms available on request in the adjacent East Range and nearby Pend Cottage.
Rodel House is available on an exclusive-use basis from £810 per night. A minimum three-night stay is recommended.
Need to know
The salt flats of Rodel and Northton are a mesmerising coastal feature on Harris.
The poet Louis MacNeice called the Isle of Harris ‘the end of everything’. He was exaggerating, slightly. There’s still the speck of St Kilda, some 45 nautical miles off to the west, although beyond that, if you keep heading in the same direction, it’s nothing but sea swell and fresh air all the way to Newfoundland.
The Isles of Harris and Lewis are separated by the narrowest of watery margins, but Harris has its own distinct magic, a particular look and feel. It’s a place of exceptional natural beauty, from the stark, mountainous north to the gently undulating south, where white-sand beaches stretch for miles and miles along the grassy machair coast, blooming with wildflowers in the summer.
Harris Tweed deserves special mention, not least because of the central position Rodel House occupies in its story.
Potato blight in the 1840s brought famine to many of the people of the Western Highlands and islands. At that time, the ‘estate’ of Harris belonged to the 6th Earl of Dunmore. His wife, Lady Catherine, alert to the suffering of the islanders and eager to find ways to alleviate it, saw commercial potential in the tweed that had been produced by the women of Harris for centuries.
She set up a grading room at Rodel House where local weavers could sell their homespun ‘webs’. These were, in turn, distributed in mainland Scotland and England, where they were highly prized, and eventually all over the world. A cottage industry became a global phenomenon.
Where to eat
Options are limited, particularly outside the summer months. The Harris Hotel and Hotel Hebrides, both in Tarbert, and the Talla na Mara Community Café, on the west coast, are open year round.
By far your best bet if you’re staying at Rodel House is to book on a fully catered basis. There’s a splendidly equipped kitchen in which a private chef performs minor miracles with impeccably fresh and hyper-local seafood, lamb and seasonal produce; hyper-local wines and spirits flow; picnic hampers are packed for days out.
What to do while you’re there
St Clement’s Church, the final resting place of 17th-century bardess Mary MacLeod, dominates the outlook at Rodel on the Isle of Harris.
- Pray Pay a visit to the medieval St Clement’s Church, a few minutes’ walk from Rodel House, where the previously mentioned Mary MacLeod is buried beneath the flagstones — supposedly face down, at her own request
- Drink Raise a glass to socially enlightened business practices at the Isle of Harris Distillery, another venture of the proprietors of Rodel House, which opened in 2015 with a twofold mission of providing sustainable employment for local people and capturing something of the essence of the island in whisky form
- Walk Lose yourself in the loveliness of the coastal walk from Northton to Rubh’ an Teampaill, a ruined 15th-century chapel built on the site of a 9,000-year-old Iron Age broch
This feature originally appeared in the July 22, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.