B
ack in 2011, moving to the remote
Scottish Highlands was not on
Iona Drysdale’s to-do list. ‘I was
working as a doctor in New
Zealand and hadn’t planned to return to
Scotland in the foreseeable future, when my
uncle was taken ill,’ she says. ‘I came back
for six months to spend time with him.’
One of Iona’s uncle’s unfinished
projects was an old fishing net store. ‘My
uncle had bought it as a ruin and was
planning to convert it into a house,’ she says.
‘He’d got as far as having the site cleared
and levelled when he fell ill. He asked me
if I’d like to take it over and I agreed.’
The first step was to work out the
design. ‘I knew I wanted the house to feel
