Grapes Hotel Update
08/01/2026
The story so far….
The owner of the Grapes Hotel, Newton Stewart, bought the Grapes at auction.He approached NSI in 2023 and offered to sell it to NSI to put to community use. An agreement was drawn up between NSI and the owner to buy it for £45,000 subject to acquiring the funding to buy it.
Funding Stage One
Applications were put into the Scottish Land Fund, Architectural Heritage Fund and Rural Housing Fund.
£10000 was received from the Rural Housing Fund
£21171 was received from the Scottish Land Fund
£4800 was received from the Architectural Heritage fund
The funding received was spent on working with the South of Scotland Community Housing (£10000) and engaging the services of Collective Architecture
Collective Architecture
Delivered drawings to Royal Institute of British Architecture Stage Two and coordinated stage one of the development.
Drawings to RIBA Stage 2 are available
Community Enterprise
Created a business plan, feasibility studies and did community consultations.
All paperwork available.
What happened after Stage one?
As per the Scottish Land Fund requirements, NSI produced a business plan, feasability studies and drawings to RIBA Stage Two.
A second stage application was put in to the Scottish Land Fund to purchase the building. Total estimated costs in the business plan came to just over £2million. Our funding application was rejected due to high costs and the flood risk according to the Scottish Environment Protection Agency map. This has then had a knock on effect as other funders knew the Scottish Land Fund wouldn’t fund the project so I was also told it was highly unlikely that another funder would.
The SEPA flood map
This map is available online to the public and was used to determine the flood risk of the Grapes. A 5% chance in the next 100 years. Not really high risk.
Where we are at now?
Further funding applications have been put on hold due to the issues of the SEPA flood map. Having emailed SEPA themselves, they said they hadn’t had any discussions with the Scottish Land Fund regarding the flood risk. D&G Council are supportive of this project going ahead, as are MSPs and other influential people in the area. Unfortunately, it feels as though we have currently hit a brick wall, and due to further funding cuts, it has become increasingly challenging to move this project forward.