Step through the doors of this freshly renovated hideaway in the Scottish Highlands and you’re in for a surprise…

Kyle House – available to rent from Holiday Architecture (price on application) – sits at the top of the Tile Bay Tongue, and was a ruin before Groves-Raines Architects got their hands on it. The practice has revived its crumbling bones and transformed it into a contemporary retreat with Nordic-inspired interiors.

According to the practice, the original house was built using stone reclaimed from the 2,000-year-old Dun Mhaigh Broch – an iron-age building whose ruins still sit on a hill overlooking the house. Groves-Raines repaired the stone structure using traditional materials, including lime render, lead and slate, and inserted new windows into the building’s facade to capitalise on views across Ben Loral and Kyle of Tongue.

Says the practice: ‘With almost nothing remaining from the original interior, the classical plan was reinterpreted and simplified to form a series of rational living spaces, pared back to an almost monastic simplicity.’

Interior designer Ruth Kramer was enlisted to give Kyle House’s rooms a Nordic twist. Conceived as ‘oak boxes’, they have locally mined caitness stone floors and the minimum of furnishings – just a few pieces by the likes of Ilse Crawford.

An open fire dominates the living room and the Danish Oak kitchen has ribbon windows, framing panoramic views of the Scottish holiday home’s scenic setting.

Read next: Stay in a remote cabin on the Scottish island of Skye