On the sweeping manicured grounds of Mount Stuart, a neo-gothic stately home on the Scottish Isle of Bute, sits a most incongruous sight: a bright yellow and green Caribbean chattel house. It’s the creation of Barbadian-Scottish artist Alberta Whittle, who had originally planned to build a bothy to welcome visitors, recognising that the imposing mansion could pose a barrier.
However, the structure ended up becoming an amalgam of a bothy and chattel house, reflecting her dual heritage. “Bothies are gathering spaces of shelter in the Scottish landscape, but I wanted to imbue it with another island’s history of making spaces,” says Glasgow-based Whittle, who represented Scotland at the 2022 Venice Biennale. “The chattel house is an architecture derived from fugitivity – so if you were seen as a troublemaker and the plantation owner wanted you to flee, you could disassemble your home quickly.”
