Hotel Hit Squad: Inside The Fife Arms, Braemar – a visual extravaganza of taxidermy, tartan walls and touches of the macabre
There is a memorable scene in season three of Frasier – the best sitcom ever made, and I won’t hear otherwise – in which Kelsey Grammar engages in emotional dialogue with Mercedes Ruehl at the gate of Seattle airport, as their hopes of lifelong romantic commitment disintegrate. “We could go antiquing!” offers Frasier, only to be told: “I’m not one of those people for whom antique is a verb…” They part crestfallen with nothing in common.
I was reminded of this exchange as I roamed around the just-opened Fife Arms in Braemar, home to the Highland Games and put on the map via affection from Queen Victoria. This is going to be the hotel to visit in 2019. It is Soho Farmhouse plus plus plus – and with the choice of a seven-hour train journey (or just under two hours by air from Stansted to Dundee), followed by a “Why not!?” visit to the new Kengo Kuma-designed V&A and a 90-minute scenic drive – it’s far enough away to dissuade the more pernicious, fair-weather, point-scoring London Fields set.
I’ve always appreciated what interior designer Russell Sage has done, although it’s not my (heavily floral and gilt china) cup of tea. Sage “antiques” voraciously, stripping auctions and markets of fabulous finds to create theatrical spaces with resonance. It would drive me barmy at home, but for a couple of nights somewhere scenic with a four-poster bed and a giant tub, it works a treat.
The Fife Arms, which five years ago was a standard tartan and Chesterfield-stuffed monstrosity, is Sage’s masterpiece. It’s also the second UK hospitality project by superstar gallerists Hauser & Wirth, so it doubles as a showcase for contemporary art. I can’t say what the place cost to conjure up, but with backyard furniture that includes a Louise Bourgeois “Spider”, I’m going with “a lot”.
This hotel isn’t the Victoriana of fusty stately homes and boring George Meredith novels. It taps into the eclectic weirdness of the era – the richest wallpaper imaginable, with ravishing handsome tones of ivy and bronze and botanical graphics; gold stars, grandfather clocks, touches of the macabre, astrology and magic; and evidence of an obsession with India as much as with Scotland.
The Fife Arms is about explorers and ectoplasm – it is jam on jam. There’s a humungous Robert Burns-themed walnut chimney piece in the entrance hall, next to a Steinway piano treated with bleach by artist Mark Bradford so it resembles topographic maps. Next door is one of the most incredible spaces I’ve ever spent an afternoon in: The Drawing Room has dark tartan walls, an open fire, an original Picasso and huge sofas covered in lavish brocades.
What creates the alchemy here is the ceiling by Chinese artist Zhang Enli, a kind of hallucinatory, folky, naif take on the Scottish landscape. As with so many of the rooms here, it’s a deeply weird combination, but it works exquisitely well.
This place is part pub for the locals (The Flying Stag bar, pictured above, incorporates a giant stuffed stag with swan’s wings leaping over the counter, flanked by a whole ossuary of antlers, and serves a superb black pudding scotch egg best enjoyed with a pint of Mischief nitro stout) and part luxury weekend-break destination with various options of room style.
I wouldn’t bother with the fairly vanilla Nature and Poetry rooms (from £218.40). I’d go straight for the full-on visual extravaganza of the Victoriana Suites (from £463.75) or the small and romantic – also slightly creepy – Croft rooms (from £130), with wood cabin-style beds reminiscent of Wes Anderson, The Evil Dead and a Mike Nelson installation.
Downstairs there is a cocktail bar themed on Elsa Schiaparelli – who I was surprised to discover was a regular visitor to town – and The Clunie Dining Room. The food is good (great turbot!) but the room itself, with a wraparound mural by artist Guillermo Kuitca, is stunning. Kuitca’s shades of green and shapes reminiscent of the Vorticist movement of the early 20th century, contribute to something glamorous and unique.
Gripes? Well, if I’m being picky, they need to work out how to serve venison burger medium-rare in the pub without breaking the law, and to ditch Chromecast as the connectivity system for the TVs – it only works with phones and slates, not laptops.
But these are minor irritants. The Fife Arms is like nothing I’ve ever come across. And for someone like me, who thinks they have seen it all before, that’s an incredible achievement.
Rooms from £130, with breakfast. There are three accessible rooms for guests with disabilities. Mark C O’Flaherty travelled as a guest of Loganair which flies between London Stansted and Dundee from £85.83 one way.
