Sunnybrae Cottage, Pitlochry

On the corner of Atholl Road and Larchwood Road in Pitlochry, Sunnybrae Cottage is one of the town's oldest buildings, a Highland home of the 1700s that shows how ordinary people lived over some 200 years. It was probably built as a byre house, the family at the west end and the cattle at the east, with turf walls and a roof carried on pairs of curved timbers called crucks; the cruck frame and thatch still survive beneath the corrugated iron that has covered the roof since the 1800s. At first there was no chimney, and smoke from a fire in the middle of the floor seeped out through the thatch. Later came stone walls, windows, timber floors and a hanging chimney, and in the 1900s a lean-to bathroom and scullery. Its tenants included a farmer and distiller in 1841, and from 1945 Jean MacDonald, the first owner to live here, ran it as a bed and breakfast. The cottage is seen from outside, with an information board.