Glenburn Hotel history
As the ferry from Wemyss Bay approaches Rothesay, the main town on the Isle of Bute, you catch a first glimpse of the imposing Glenburn Hotel. With its colonnaded terrace and impressive gardens spread out far below, the hotel sits grandly on a hill on the eastern shore of Rothesay Bay. Originally the Glenburn Hydropathic when it was first built in 1843, this important building will be the venue for this year’s Bute Noir events, allowing visitors to the increasingly popular Crime Writers’ Festival the opportunity to enjoy a little of Rothesay’s past. The Glenburn was the first of several Hydropathic hotels built in Scotland. In those days hydrotherapy was seen as an alternative to the prevailing medical treatments of the time, focussing on “the spiritual and physical properties of water”, taking lots of fresh air and keeping to a simple diet. A sign of the importance of the hydropathic movement was that 47 rooms were dedicated t...
