The once unused Victorian garden house is now a shop-exhibition hybrid, bringing locally sourced provisions and crafts to Glen Dye

Tucked among tall Scottish pines and set beneath the granite peak of Clachnaben is Gladstone’s, a staffless luxury goods store run on honesty. Here, you help yourself. The shop is the latest addition to the 15,000-acre Glen Dye estate near Banchory, and has been welcoming customers since earlier this year.

Created by the Gladstone family, who have owned the Glen Dye estate site since the 19th century, Gladstone’s joins swanky cabins, cottages, outdoor wood-fired hot tubs and a discovery centre. Members of the public can visit by appointment; Glen Dye guests have 24/7 access for the duration of their stay.

“The reason is simply that we can give our guests a key fob and they can take entry by themselves,” explains owner Charlie Gladstone, “That’s harder to do with people who come from afar. Everyone is welcome and every sale is made on trust. We don’t employ shop staff or anything like that although someone’s always around to help if people have questions.”

The shop’s shelves are filled with soft furnishings from the family’s brand Gladstone / Hellen, which are designed by Charlie and his wife Caroline. Almost all products in store have been made in the United Kingdom. “This is a critical part of our business’s evolution. We truly believe in British manufacturers and craftspeople,” says Charlie.

Scottish makers are well represented with locally crafted knitwear, blankets and baskets sitting alongside clothing and homewares.

Also on offer are staples from the OURS range (produced at the family’s farm shop in Wales), store cupboard essentials, a personal selection of vintage pieces drawn from decades of collecting, stationery, prints, crockery and souvenirs.

The store also operates as a studio with exhibitions planned including a recent show featuring work by long term collaborator Gail Bryson.

“We are building a brand that brings all of our different projects and products together in one space, and we felt that the very best place to launch that would be at Glen Dye,” says Charlie.

Charlie’s latest book, Real Wild Heaven, which is a memoir of Glen Dye is also available in store. “It takes place over the last 22,000 years of history from the ice age to the modern day,” explains Charlie “If anything the theme is one of the fleetingness of life. It’s a story of our struggle to renovate Glen Dye, but it’s also the story of witches, ice ages, drug addicted poets, politics, whisky distilling, wild animals and whaling.”

Respecting the site’s history has been a priority from the start. Fragments of an old Victorian garden house still remained when the project began, and the Gladstone family’s longtime joiner Neil Strachan used them as inspiration for the design.

“I wanted to build something that had form and function, fitted the existing foundation, and felt as though it belonged there,” explains Neil.

Using timber from Glen Dye, he focused on traditional techniques like draw-boring to assemble the frame. This means the wooden peg holes were positioned a couple of millimetres out of line so that driving the peg pulls the timbers tightly together and locks the joint.

“These are methods that have been used for hundreds of years and would have been familiar to the Carpenter who built the original building 150 years ago,” Neil says. “It seemed right to respect that craftsmanship and build the new structure in much the same way.”

This approach allowed the frame to be built without nails or modern metal fixings. The whole build took about two months and prioritised creating a meaningful connection to the original rather than producing an exact reproduction.

“Gladstone’s is very much a working building rather than a museum piece,” Neil explains. “But I like the fact that the way it has been put together would be completely recognisable to the craftsmen who were working here generations ago.”

The result is a space that feels deliberately analogue and old-fashioned in the best way.

Asked what he loves most about the new space, Charlie says: “That it is a pure expression of our niche. There’s nothing else like it anywhere and I feel this is particularly important in the modern age where so much feels the same. We now have the confidence in our vision and the shop embodies that.”

For now, the Gladstone’s carefully curated stock won’t be sold online, but is expected to be available from early November 2026.

You can follow the shop for updates on Instagram here.

Visit the Glen Dye Cabins & Cottages website | Follow Glen Dye Cabins & Cottages on Instagram 

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