What's in a name?

When Donald Matheson came to name our hotel in 1924, he was a little liberal with the facts. You see, he’d holidayed in the region and had taken a liking to our home under the Ochil Hills. Here, he thought, would make the perfect place to realise his dream of a glamorous destination for the great and the good of ‘Modern’ Britain, a place to establish Scotland’s first Railway Hotel. The only issue was, he wasn’t sold on the nearby name of Crieff Junction or Auchterarder and wanted something altogether more romantic.

Instead of coming up with his own name, he took a fancy for one from a nearby estate and family name: Gleneagles.

The Haldanes of Gleneagles have held their seat for centuries, with their proud Perthshire stronghold dating back to the 1200s. With over 7,000 acres of some of Scotland’s most beautiful landscapes under their stewardship, theirs is one of Scotland’s most striking estates.

It is fair to say, then, that they were not entirely delighted when a new hotel borrowed their name.

Today, the two ventures that carry the name Gleneagles – our Hotel and the original Estate, still owned by the Haldane family – are on the friendliest of terms. But from time to time during the 1920s and 1930s, magazines and newspapers published clarifications at the family’s behest, explaining that their reports of activities at Gleneagles should have spelt out Gleneagles Hotel to avoid confusion with their estate.

Even from the outset, however, there was heated debate in the letters pages of local newspapers about the name change. Auchterarder was the nearest town, after all, and ‘the hotel site is not in Gleneagles, is not adjoining or adjacent to Gleneagles but is on a cultivated part of the Muir of Tullibardine’, argued one angry correspondent.

The Haldanes were, understandably, protective of their name. In one letter, Brodrick Chinnery-Haldane, 26th Laird of Gleneagles, wrote that the estate had been in his family since the 12th century, and that the name had ‘all along been associated with “Haldane of Gleneagles” and with nobody else’. The arrival of a glamorous new hotel, it seems, was not quite the honour they had been hoping for.

The matter became sufficiently confusing that even The Field Magazine was prompted to correspond with the family, promising to ensure that nothing was published which might mislead readers into thinking that the hotel and estate were one and the same. And when the New York Times was alerted to the fact that mail intended for the hotel had been finding its way to the Haldanes, the newspaper politely assured the family that its mailing list had been corrected.

In other words, there was a time when saying ‘Gleneagles’ required rather more precision than it does today.

A century on, the Haldanes can look back on the whole affair with rather more amusement.

The current steward, James Haldane, remembers growing up with the Hotel very much in the family’s orbit. In the late 1970s, he learnt to swim in the Hotel’s pool, back when it occupied the space where the Birnam restaurant now sits. He hit his first golf balls on the Driving Range, on the ground where the Wee Course is today, and played squash at the Hotel with his father (Martin Haldane, the present Laird) – who, on one memorable occasion, was asked to change out of his grey flannel slacks into something considered more appropriate!

There are also stories of the naming dispute being passed down through the generations. James recalls that his beloved cousin Alex, from whom his father inherited, always insisted that letters addressed simply to Gleneagles should be delivered to the Estate. On one occasion, he was delighted to receive a booking by post…for the honeymoon suite!

The Hotel itself once leaned into the joke, using the franking strapline ‘There is only one Gleneagles’. It was soon discontinued when undelivered Hotel letters began being routed back to the Estate.

And, remarkably, the confusion still occasionally resurfaces. ‘Only last week,’ James tells us, ‘we had an American lady ring our doorbell and ask if it was too early to check in!’

And so what began as a rather prickly disagreement has evolved into something altogether warmer as time has done its work. Angelica Haldane, James’ wife, describes the relationship between Estate and Hotel as having moved from ‘bitterly contentious, to resignedly neutral, to enthusiastically synergetic’. Today, she says, the two have a fabulous working relationship, with long-term friendships, mutual understanding and a close-knit sense of community between their people.

It helps, perhaps, that there is plenty of history to share.

For the Haldanes, Gleneagles is much more than a name. The Gaelic eag means ‘pass’ or ‘notch’, reflecting the strategic importance of the route through the Ochils. Across eight centuries, geography has shaped the family’s fortunes, and it is that profound, unbroken connection between family and place that has endured.

And so, a hundred years after Donald Matheson decided that Gleneagles sounded rather more glamorous than Crieff Junction, the name has acquired a life of its own.

There is still an original Gleneagles. There is now a Hotel called Gleneagles. Occasionally, someone still turns up at the wrong front door. But these days, thankfully, nobody is writing to the newspapers to complain.

Instead, Estate and Hotel share the name, the landscape and, increasingly, a sense of pride in what that name has come to represent. What was once a naming dispute has become, in its own peculiar way, a rather wonderful partnership.

And for that, we remain grateful to the Haldanes for allowing us to borrow their moniker – just a little while longer.