Lizzie Massie’s career as a much sought-after cook and chef goes back to her Hebridean roots. The natural larder on the island of Jura - from venison and sea trout to wood sorrel and blaeberries - has inspired her since her childhood there. Her great-grandfather Walter Hargreaves Brown bought Ardlussa House, in the north east of the island, from the Astor family in 1926. His daughter, Lizzie’s grandmother Margaret, lived there after the Second World War to help her husband, Robin Fletcher, recuperate after some time in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. They decided to stay on and turned the estate into a working farm, and this continued until 1962 when Lizzie’s grandfather died. After a spell living on the mainland in Comrie, Perthshire, Lizzie’s family returned to Ardlussa in 1984 and have lived there ever since.
