Over the last few weeks, great progress has been made by the construction team rebuilding the Botanic Cottage. The foundations are now in place, and the outline of the cottage is clear to see – for all those people who wondered if moving a building across the city and actually getting it rebuilt was far fetched, now is the moment when it shows that it is all real. Much work had to be done to prepare the ground before construction work could begin, but once the sandy ground had been solidified, progress has been rapid. Seeing the curved front in particular starts to give a sense of the scale of the building.

However, the really exciting bit is soon to begin. Painstaking work to sort the numbered stones which make up window and door frames, the chimney and building corners, has been started, and the many piles of rubble stone have now been bagged up, ready to be moved onto the building site so that work can begin on using the historic stones to recreate the cottage. This week we had a demonstration from the Scottish Lime Centre to show how hot lime is made, which was fascinating. You can find out more about traditional lime here. We’ll be using lime mortar to bind the stones, and a lime render on the exterior of the building once complete.