About

On this page, you can find out more about the Brough Lodge Trust, which established Shetland PeerieMakkers in 2014, and about the building – Brough Lodge – which was the Trust’s original focus

The Trust

Brough Lodge Trust was formed in 1998 as a Building Preservation Trust (BPT) and is a registered Scottish Charity (SC 028725) run on a voluntary basis.

In 2015 the charity’s purposes were widened to the advancement of arts, heritage and culture and the advancement of the Shetland heritage, textile and musical culture. The Trust became incorporated as a company limited by guarantee with Companies House UK.

The Trustees /Directors    

  • Pierre-Etienne Cambillard, Chairman

  • Olive Borland

  • John Coutts

  • Alastair Hamilton, Secretary

  • Peter Jamieson

  • Stephen Sheard

  • Drew Ratter, Treasurer & Retreat Project Spokesperson

  • Cecil Tait

Brough Lodge

Brough Lodge was constructed in 1825 by Arthur Nicolson, a merchant in Lerwick. The house was built on the site of an earlier "Haa" house.

Arthur Nicolson had acquired the lands in Fetlar in 1805 in partial settlement of a debt owed by Andrew Bruce of Urie, who had died in 1803. Nicolson had travelled extensively throughout Europe during the early 1800s.  It seems likely that he based his "blueprint" for Brough Lodge on the architecture he found in France, Switzerland, Italy and elsewhere, as well as borrowing various classical design elements.  The result was a building that is unique; there is certainly nothing else like it in Shetland.

Descendants of Arthur Nicolson lived in the house during the 19th and 20th centuries but, after the last Lady Nicolson moved out of Brough Lodge in the 1970s, the house lay empty and began to deteriorate.  In the late 1980s, Shetland Archives was given permission to remove more than a quarter of a tonne of historically valuable estate papers. 

Trustee, Olive Borland, is a niece of the Nicolson family and the last heir to the estate; she transferred ownership of Brough Lodge to the Trust in 2007.

In 2014, extensive repairs were undertaken, including a complete replacement of the roof, with support from Historic Environment Scotland, Shetland Amenity Trust and Shetland Islands Council.  In 2023, the European Heritage Project took over the building, the aim being to restore it as high-quality visitor accommodation.