Boleskine House, the Scottish manor once home to both Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page and occultist Aleister Crowley, is to open to the public for the first time in 260 years.
The historic property, which was severely damaged by fires in 2015 and 2019, has been fully restored over the last six years and will be celebrated with a Grand Opening Weekend on April 10 and 11. Self-guided tours are available from April 13.
“The Grand Opening will be less about a single moment of completion and more a celebration of a long journey," Keith Readdy, chairman of the Boleskine House Foundation, tells The Inverness Courier. "The April weekend marks the first time in roughly 260 years that the finished building is publicly accessible – a thank you to the volunteers, craftspeople, contractors and public supporters who've made this six-year restoration possible."
Aleister Crowley bought the house in 1899, taking advantage of its remote location to conduct black magic and various other rituals while in residence. Jimmy Page – who had two quotes from Crowley, "Do What Thou Wilt" and "So Mote It Be" etched into the run-in grooves on early pressings of Led Zeppelin III – bought the building in 1971, five years after a previous owner shot himself in what had been Crowley's bedroom.
"The bad vibes were already there," Page told Rolling Stone in 1975. "A man was beheaded there and sometimes you can hear his head rolling down. I haven't actually heard it, but a friend of mine, who is extremely straight and doesn't know anything about anything like that at all, heard it.
"He thought it was the cats bungling about. I wasn't there at the time, but he told the help, 'Why don't you let the cats out at night?' They make a terrible racket, rolling about in the halls.' And they said, 'The cats are locked in a room every night.' Then they told him the story of the house. So that sort of thing was there before Crowley got there. Of course, after Crowley there have been suicides, people carted off to mental hospitals."
Page didn't spend much time at Boleskine, which was looked after by a friend, Malcolm Dent, who once reported being confronted at the house by an unidentified creature he described as "pure evil". Page sold the property in 1991.
The Inverness Courier reports that the renovation will include a tribute to Page’s connection to Boleskine. Tickets for the opening weekend events and the self-guided tours are on sale now.
