The Carnegie Club at Skibo Castle

The one thing

Andrew Carnegie built himself a swimming pavilion in the early 1900s and it remains the loveliest thing of its kind in Scotland, a steel framed, glass paned hall by Mackenzie and Moncur, glasshouse makers to Queen Victoria, standing on the banks of Loch Ospisdale. The glass canopy roof once opened with the pull of a lever, a minstrels' gallery still looks down on the water from the days when the drained pool doubled as a ballroom, and the club restored the whole building in 2006 at a cost of £4.2 million.

The verdict

Skibo Castle is not a hotel and has no wish to be one. It is a private residential members club in the Northern Highlands, a Scottish Baronial castle with Edwardian interiors standing in 8,000 acres of pine forest and heather moor above the Dornoch Firth, and it has run as The Carnegie Club since 1995, thirty years this year. Carnegie bought the estate in 1898 and came to call it Heaven on Earth, and the club has spent three decades keeping the house party he started in motion.

The house party is the point. A resident bagpiper plays the estate awake in the morning, a dram waits at the door on arrival, an organist accompanies breakfast, and dinner drifts into a sing song around the piano more often than not. Twenty one castle rooms with four posters and roll top baths, one of them with a private library tucked up a tower, and thirteen lodges across the estate hold a maximum of around ninety guests, looked after by some three hundred staff, so the castle always feels like a home with friends in it rather than a business with customers.

Days here run outdoors and end gently. There is golf on the Carnegie Links, laid along the shore of the firth with no tee times at all, boat fishing on Loch Evelix with ghillies, riding, shooting and clay court tennis, and then the day folds inward, afternoon tea in the Drawing Room followed by a swim in the pavilion and a spa treatment before dinner. One daily rate covers nearly everything, all food and all drink from morning coffee to champagne and whisky, so there is nothing to sign and no bill shadowing the week.

The club turned thirty in fine style, with garden parties through the summer and a Whisky Library in the former museum where every bottle was either distilled in 1995 or aged for thirty years. It is that kind of place, sentimental about its own story and quietly serious about the pleasure of its members.

The water

The pool is the wellness heart of the estate and one of the great swimming rooms of Britain. The pavilion went up in the early 1900s as a 90 foot glass and steel hall holding a 25 foot saltwater pool, heated by a tunnel that carried warmth from the castle furnace, and the 2006 restoration kept its soul while renewing its workings, so the sandstone pillars are still carved with mythical sea creatures while the pool itself is now stainless steel lined and ozone treated. Light pours through the glass all day, the loch sits just beyond it, and each November the building hosts a concert under the stars during the club's arts weekend.

The water is used daily and shared generously, with family sessions each morning and afternoon and the quieter hours left to adults swimming lengths under the glass. Honesty matters here, so it should be said plainly that the pavilion is the whole of the wet offer. There is no published sauna, hydrotherapy pool or thermal circuit at the spa, and the one steam room on the estate sits in the golf clubhouse locker rooms. Skibo offers one perfect pool rather than a journey, and it is worth knowing which of those things is being fallen for.

Treatments

The spa, which the club calls the Skibo Spa, keeps three treatment rooms inside a hundred year old sandstone building near the castle, with a nail salon, a boutique and an outdoor relaxation terrace for the after glow. The club partnered with Oskia, the British skincare house, and the menu runs from the Signature Glow Facial with LED light and the Revitalising Facial through to the Renaissance Body Glow, warm oil experiences and a luxurious hot stone treatment with full body massage. It is a small, personal spa in the way the whole estate is small and personal, built for a treatment between the links and the Drawing Room rather than for a day spent in a robe.

Treatments are booked in residence, and they are one of the few pleasures at Skibo that sit outside the all inclusive daily rate.

Getting in

The door opens two ways, as a member or as a member's guest, and there is no third way in. The Carnegie Club is fully subscribed, new applications join a waitlist, and prospective members visit once by invitation before the club decides. No day passes exist, no treatment can be booked from outside, and the club publishes no prices, though recent reporting puts joining at £40,000 with £13,000 a year in subscriptions, both covering a family, and nightly stays from around £1,400 with nearly everything included.

The estate sits above the Dornoch Firth in Sutherland, about an hour north of Inverness airport by road, with Royal Dornoch and Glenmorangie ten minutes away. Dogs are welcomed in the lodges for a small charge, and children are looked after as generously as anywhere in Scotland, with a supervised Children's Barn open daily and babysitting included in the evenings.

What to know before you fall in love

• This is a members club in the fullest sense, so without a membership or an invitation from a member the door does not open, and the waitlist for membership runs to years.
• The wet offer is one glorious historic pool, and there is no published sauna, hydrotherapy or thermal suite, so devotees of the long thermal circuit should love it for what it is rather than expect one.
• The spa itself is intimate at three treatment rooms, there are no residential wellness programmes, and treatments sit outside the otherwise all inclusive daily rate.
• Sutherland is genuinely remote, about an hour beyond Inverness, which is a large part of the magic and a real consideration for a short stay.
• Families are welcomed lavishly, though under 16s stay in the estate lodges rather than the castle itself.

Best for

Members and their fortunate guests, above all. Multi generational families, because the Children's Barn, the included babysitting and the teen adventures let three generations holiday in the same place without compromise. Golfers, for whom an empty championship links with no tee times is close to a dream. And anyone who has ever wished a great Edwardian country house would take them in as a friend of the family, because that, more than any facility, is what Skibo actually offers.