What next for the Glen Coe cottage tainted by Savile?

Tucked into a hillside on a bend of the A82 in Glen Coe sits an old white cottage.

The little house is dwarfed by its neighbour across the road, the towering Three Sisters ridges of the 1,150m (3,773ft) mountain Biden nam Bian.

Its name, Allt-na-Reigh, roughly translates from its mangled Gaelic as "burn of the slope", a reference to the stream that rushes close by and down under a bridge on the A82.

But Allt-na-Reigh is in a sorry state having become a target for attacks on the memory of its dead former owner - Jimmy Savile.

The cottage has been repeatedly vandalised since the paedophile TV presenter died in his Leeds flat in 2011, and his years of exploiting hundreds of people, mostly vulnerable young women, came to light.

The Dame Janet Smith review, published in 2016, identified 72 victims of Savile in connection with his work at the BBC, including eight who were raped.

Graffiti covers the walls of the cottage in Glen Coe, the windows are smashed and a bicycle wheel has been thrown on to the roof.

The roof itself is damaged with tiles having been deliberately ripped off it.

Food wrappers and empty drinks cans litter the grassy bank below the house.

Savile owned the cottage for about 13 years, and there are many who are angry his short association has put at risk the positive impacts the place has had over a much longer period of time.

There are now plans to tear down the cottage and replace it with a new family home.

Under the proposals, outbuildings would be redeveloped and named Hamish House in honour of another former resident - legendary Scottish mountaineer Dr Hamish MacInnes.

But there are others who believe Allt-na-Reigh should quietly vanish and the site left to go wild.

Photographer, film-maker and long-time mountaineer John Cleare first came across the cottage in 1952.

He says for a long time it was a quaint and well-known landmark - a symbol suggesting that "at last you’d reached Glen Coe".

"I was a schoolboy on a motorbike from Surrey," says John of the first time he set eyes on the place.

"This was the promised land."

John later became close friends with Dr Hamish MacInnes.

Hamish, who died in November 2020 aged 90, climbed the Matterhorn in the Alps when he was just 16, formed mountain rescue teams, invented ice axes and a rescue stretcher and wrote extensively about Scotland's mountains.

John photographed his friend in his workshop at Allt-na-Reigh for a magazine article in 1968.

"I have only good vibes of the place. I knew nothing of the Savile era," says John.

He adds: "Like so many such places, it may make a better memory than a tainted ruin."

Glencoe-born Davy Gunn remembers a time when Allt-na-Reigh was a family home on a working croft, a small farm with a few cows.

He says it also served as a roadman's cottage with its occupant keeping the nearby road safe for travellers.

Davy says there were similar properties that once dotted the glen.

Davy served as a volunteer in Glencoe Mountain Rescue Team alongside Hamish.

He describes his old friend as a generous man with a dry sense of humour, but who could appear dour to those who did not know him.

Davy says Hamish would have been uncomfortable with the idea of a house being named after him.

"Hamish wouldn't want a museum or a plaque. His legacy was in his writing and mountaineering achievement," he says.

"Naming something after him is the antithesis of who he was."

Davy also says Hamish's story should be kept separate from the planning application, and he blames the media for stirring up anger around Savile's ownership of the cottage.

"The papers call it 'Savile's lair', but he didn't live there all that much and when he did he usually slept in a van outside the cottage.

"The women in the area didn't like him (Savile). He kept to himself."

Davy adds: "The best thing to do is just to flatten the site."

Former marine commando and Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team member Mick Tighe, sees the damage to the cottage as senseless acts of vandalism.

"What does that do to Savile? He's dead," says Mick, who was part of a close circle of friends who helped Hamish with his creation of lifesaving mountain equipment.

The retired mountain guide believes it was unlikely Savile carried out offences in the cottage.

"There are some pretty fierce characters in Glen Coe," he says.

"If they had ever got a whiff of him doing anything wrong they would probably have topped him."

But Mick is in agreement with the idea that the cottage should go due to the unwanted attention it attracts today.

"Raze and rewild," he says, quoting a comment made by friend Claire MacLeod, of volunteer group Friends of Nevis.

Rob Taylor worked as an apprentice to Hamish in the late 1960s and remained close friends with the mountaineer.

Rob believes Hamish fell out of love with Allt-na-Reigh in the 1970s after rebuilding it following a fire started by a knocked over paraffin lamp.

"Hamish never lived at the cottage except sporadically after it was rebuilt - he felt the A82 had become far too busy and noisy," he says.

Rob adds: "Hamish was deeply troubled and saddened by the whole Savile affair - I think the sight of the cottage for Hamish became a lasting reminder to his incredible evil.

"But one must keep in mind here - that the cottage had been sold on several times by the time Saville bought it. He did not buy it from Hamish."

Rob says Hamish only once mentioned what he thought should happen to the place.

"Knock it down and remove the stain from the landscape," says Rob.

"That’s what he said and that’s what he would have wanted."