The world's largest log cabin

...is the Chateau Montebello.



The private resort of Montebello, Quebec, Canada, often described as a "log chateau" was built in 1930. The cedar chateau was built by the Swiss-American Hubert Saddlemire who was inspired by the chateaux of the Swiss Alps. He employed 3,500 construction workers at the peak of building and used 10,000 red cedar logs, all cut and set by hand.

For forty years it was privately owned until 1970 when it was taken over by Canadian Pacific Hotels. Today it is a luxury hotel attracting visitors from around the world.

Many of the Montebello Hotel guest rooms feature the outside log cabin wall, so you do get to appreciate the original rustic building. But what I liked best was (according to their website) most rooms have "windows that open for fresh air." All mod cons...

What with today's exchange rate a weeks stay at the Montebello in a King Garden View room (not one overlooking the dustbins at the back) will cost you around £2000.

For the same price you could stay at home and opt instead for a Keops Interlock 300 - a 3 x 3m cabin which you can enjoy all year round and just like the Montebello Hotel also includes windows that open for fresh air!

Which country invented the log cabin?

The oldest log homes are said to date from 30BC, a pile of logs stacked up to form a pyramid (is that why Richard chose the name Keops?) but the answer is probably Scandinavia 4,000 years ago. Metal tools in the Bronze age made it possible to build a warm and substantial building in a short space of time. They were found all across northern Europe.

There is a theory that the Minoan's and Mycenaen's one-roomed house was originally made from horizontal pine logs, so it could be that the ancient Greeks also have a claim on the log cabin.

Swedish and Finnish settlements in Delaware in the 1630s eventually brought the cabin to America. If you're lucky enough to visit Hodgenville in Kentucky, the museum there features the log cabin in which Abraham Lincoln was born...which was actually built thirty years after his death! And don't think about doing the touristy bit and taking one for the album with you posing beside the legendary cabin, the US National Park Service has banned flash photography in case it damages the historic logs.