Scottish baronial or Scots baronial is an
architectural style
An architectural style is a set of characteristics and features that make a building or other structure notable or historically identifiable. It is a sub-class of style in the visual arts generally, and most styles in architecture relate closely ...
of 19th century
Gothic Revival
Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...
which
revived the forms and ornaments of historical
architecture of Scotland in the Late Middle Ages and the
Early Modern Period. Reminiscent of
Scottish castles, buildings in the Scots baronial style are characterised by elaborate rooflines embellished with
conical roofs,
tourelles, and
battlements with
Machicolations, often with an asymmetric plan. Popular during the fashion for
Romanticism
Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...
and the
Picturesque, Scots baronial architecture was equivalent to the
Jacobethan Revival of 19th-century
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...
, and likewise revived the Late Gothic appearance of the fortified domestic architecture of the elites in the
Late Middle Ages
The Late Middle Ages or Late Medieval Period was the period of European history lasting from AD 1300 to 1500. The Late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the early modern period (and in much of Europe, the Ren ...
and the
architecture
Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings ...
of the
Jacobean era.
Among
architects
An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...
of the Scots baronial style in the
Victorian era
In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwa ...
were
William Burn and
David Bryce.
Romanticism in Scotland coincided with a
Scottish national identity
Scottish national identity is a term referring to the sense of national identity, as embodied in the shared and characteristic culture, languages and traditions, of the Scottish people.
Although the various dialects of Gaelic, the Scots lan ...
during the 19th century, and some of the most emblematic country residences of 19th-century
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to ...
were built in this style, including
Queen Victoria
Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 216 days was longer than that of any previ ...
's
Balmoral Castle and
Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet, playwright and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European and Scottish literature, notably the novels '' Ivanhoe'', '' Rob Roy ...
's
Abbotsford, while in urban settings
Cockburn Street, Edinburgh was one street built wholly in baronial style. Baronial style buildings were typically of stone, whether
ashlar
Ashlar () is finely dressed (cut, worked) stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared, or a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitruv ...
or
masonry
Masonry is the building of structures from individual units, which are often laid in and bound together by mortar; the term ''masonry'' can also refer to the units themselves. The common materials of masonry construction are bricks, building ...
.
Following
Robert William Billings's ''Baronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Scotland'', architectural historians identified the stylistic features characteristic of the
baronial castles built from the latter 16th century as Scots baronial style, which as a revived idiom architects continued to employ up until 1930s. Scottish baronial was core influence on
Charles Rennie Mackintoshs
Modern Style
The Modern Style is a style of architecture, art, and design that first emerged in the United Kingdom in the mid-1880s. It is the first Art Nouveau style worldwide, and it represents the evolution of the Arts and Crafts movement which was native ...
architecture. The style was considered a British national idiom emblematic of Scotland, and was widely used for public buildings, country houses, residences and
follies throughout the British Empire. The
Scottish National War Memorial
The Scottish National War Memorial is located in Edinburgh Castle and commemorates Scottish service personnel and civilians, and those serving with Scottish regiments, who died in the two world wars and subsequent conflicts. Its chief archite ...
was the last significant monument of the baronial style, built 1920 in
Edinburgh Castle
Edinburgh Castle is a historic castle in Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland. It stands on Castle Rock (Edinburgh), Castle Rock, which has been occupied by humans since at least the Iron Age, although the nature of the early settlement is unclear. ...
after
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
.
Revival and name
The Scottish baronial style is also called Scotch baronial,
Scots baronial or just baronial style.
The name was invented in the 19th century and may come from Robert William Billings's book ''Baronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Scotland'', published in 1852. Before, the style does not seem to have had a name. The buildings produced by the Scottish baronial revival by far outnumber those of the original Scottish "baronial" castles of the Early Modern Period.
Predecessors
Scottish baronial style drew upon the buildings of the
Scottish Renaissance. The style of elite residences built by
barons in Scotland
In Scotland, a baron or baroness is the head of a feudal barony, also known as a prescriptive barony. This used to be attached to a particular piece of land on which was situated the ''caput'' ( Latin for "head") or essence of the barony, nor ...
developed under the influence of
French architecture and the architecture of the
County of Flanders
The County of Flanders was a historic territory in the Low Countries.
From 862 onwards, the counts of Flanders were among the original twelve peers of the Kingdom of France. For centuries, their estates around the cities of Ghent, Bruges a ...
in the 16th century and was abandoned by about 1660.
The style kept many of the features of the high-rising medieval Gothic castles and introduced Renaissance features. The high and relatively thin-walled medieval fortifications had been made obsolete by gunpowder weapons but were associated with chivalry and landed nobility. High roofs, towers and turrets were kept for status reasons. Renaissance elements were introduced. This concerned mainly the windows that became bigger, had straight lintels or round bows and typically lacked mullions. The style drew on tower houses and peel towers,
retaining many of their external features. French Renaissance also kept the steep roofs of medieval castles as can be seen for example at
Azay-le-Rideau (1518), and the original Scottish baronial style might have been influenced by French masons brought to Scotland to work on royal palaces.
The style was quite limited in scope: a style for lesser Scottish landlords. The walls usually are rubble work and only quoins, window dressings and copings are in ashlar. Sculpted ornaments are sparsely used. In most cases the windows lack pediments. The style often uses
corbel
In architecture, a corbel is a structural piece of stone, wood or metal jutting from a wall to carry a superincumbent weight, a type of bracket. A corbel is a solid piece of material in the wall, whereas a console is a piece applied to the s ...
led
turret
Turret may refer to:
* Turret (architecture), a small tower that projects above the wall of a building
* Gun turret, a mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon
* Objective turret, an indexable holder of multiple lenses in an optical microscope
* M ...
s sometimes called tourelles,
bartizan
A bartizan (an alteration of ''bratticing''), also called a guerite, ''garita'', or ''échauguette'', or spelled bartisan, is an overhanging, wall-mounted turret projecting from the walls of late medieval and early-modern fortifications from th ...
s or pepperpot turrets. The corbels supporting the turret typically are roll-moulded. Their roofs were conical. Gables are often crow-stepped. Round towers supporting square garret chambers corbelled out over the cylinder of their main bodies are particular the Scottish baronial style. They can be seen at
Claypotts,
Monea,
Colliston
Colliston is a roadside hamlet in Angus, Scotland that is four miles north of Arbroath on the A933 Arbroath to Brechin road, in the parish of St Vigeans.
See also
*Arbroath
References
SourcesColliston
in the ''Gazetteer for Scotland''.
...
,
Thirlestane,
Auchans,
Balvenie
The Balvenie distillery is a Speyside single malt Scotch whisky distillery in Dufftown, Scotland, owned by William Grant & Sons.
History
William Grant was born on 19 December 1839 in his father's house in Dufftown. At seven he began herding ...
, and
Fiddes.
Such castles or tower houses are typically built on asymmetric plans. Often this is a
Z-plan as at Claypotts Castle (1569–1588), or on an L-plan as at Colliston. Roof lines are uneven and irregular.
The Scottish baronial style coexisted even in Scotland with
Northern Renaissance architecture, which was preferred by the wealthier clients.
William Wallace's work at the North Range of
Linlithgow Palace (1618–1622) and at
Heriot's Hospital (1628–1633) are examples of a contemporaneous Scottish Renaissance architecture. Wallace worked for the
Countess of Home at
Moray House
The Moray House School of Education and Sport ('Moray House') is a school within the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Science at the University of Edinburgh. It is based in historic buildings on the Holyrood Campus, located between the C ...
on Edinburgh's
Canongate, an Anglo-Scottish client who employed the English master mason
Nicholas Stone at her London house in Aldersgate.
The baronial style as well as the Scottish Renaissance style finally gave way to the grander English forms associated with
Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones (; 15 July 1573 – 21 June 1652) was the first significant architect in England and Wales in the early modern period, and the first to employ Vitruvian rules of proportion and symmetry in his buildings.
As the most notable archit ...
in the later part of the seventeenth century.
[
]
Scottish baronial
European architecture of the 19th century was dominated by revivals
Revival most often refers to:
*Resuscitation of a person
*Language revival of an extinct language
* Revival (sports team) of a defunct team
*Revival (television) of a former television series
*Revival (theatre), a new production of a previously pr ...
of various historic styles. This current took off in the middle of the 18th century with the Gothic Revival
Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...
in Britain. The Gothic Revival in architecture has been seen as an expression of romanticism and according to Alvin Jackson, the Scots baronial style was "a Caledonia
Caledonia (; ) was the Latin name used by the Roman Empire to refer to the part of Great Britain () that lies north of the River Forth, which includes most of the land area of Scotland. Today, it is used as a romantic or poetic name for all ...
n reading of the gothic". Some of the earliest evidence of a revival in Gothic architecture is from Scotland. Inveraray Castle, built starting from 1746 with design input from William Adam, incorporates turrets. These were largely conventional Palladian style houses that incorporated some external features of the Scots baronial style. William Adam's son's, Robert
The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of ''Hrōþ, Hruod'' ( non, Hróðr) "fame, glory ...
and James continued their father's approach, with houses such as Mellerstain and Wedderburn in Berwickshire and Seton House in East Lothian, but most clearly at Culzean Castle, Ayrshire, remodelled by Robert from 1777.
Large windows of plate glass are not uncommon. Bay windows often have their individual roofs adorned by pinnacles and crenulations. Porch
A porch (from Old French ''porche'', from Latin ''porticus'' "colonnade", from ''porta'' "passage") is a room or gallery located in front of an entrance of a building. A porch is placed in front of the facade of a building it commands, and form ...
es, portico
A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cul ...
s and porte-cocheres, are often given the castle treatment. An imitation portcullis on the larger houses would occasionally be suspended above a front door, flanked by heraldic beasts and other medieval architectural motifs.
Important for the adoption of the style in the early nineteenth century was Abbotsford House, the residence of the novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet, playwright and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European and Scottish literature, notably the novels '' Ivanhoe'', '' Rob Roy ...
. Rebuilt for him from 1816, it became a model for the Scottish baronial Revival style. Common features borrowed from 16th- and 17th-century houses included battlemented gateways, crow-stepped gables, spiral stairs, pointed turrets
Turret may refer to:
* Turret (architecture), a small tower that projects above the wall of a building
* Gun turret, a mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon
* Objective turret, an indexable holder of multiple lenses in an optical microscope
* M ...
and machicolations.[L. Hull, ''Britain's Medieval Castles'' (London: Greenwood, 2006), , p. 154.] Orchardton Castle
Orchardton Castle overlooks the Solway Coast. Built in the 1880s, this is a Grade B listed property formerly known as Orchardton House. Built around a Scottish Baronial-style mansion located in Auchencairn in the historical county of Kirkcudbri ...
near Auchencairn, Scotland is a superb example dating from the 1880s.
Important for the dissemination of the style was Robert Billings' (1813–1874) four-volume work ''Baronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Scotland'' (1848–52).[T. M. Devine]
"In Bed with an Elephant: Almost Three Hundred Years of the Anglo-Scottish Union"
''Scottish Affairs'', 57, Autumn 2006, , p. 11. It was applied to many relatively modest dwellings by architects such as William Burn (1789–1870), David Bryce (1803–76),[ Edward Blore (1787–1879), Edward Calvert (c. 1847–1914) and Robert Stodart Lorimer (1864–1929) and in urban contexts, including the building of Cockburn Street in Edinburgh (from the 1850s) as well as the National ]Wallace Monument
The National Wallace Monument (generally known as the Wallace Monument) is a 67 metre tower on the shoulder of the Abbey Craig, a hilltop overlooking Stirling in Scotland. It commemorates Sir William Wallace, a 13th- and 14th-century Scottish hero ...
at Stirling (1859–1869).[M. Glendinning, R. MacInnes and A. MacKechnie, ''A History of Scottish Architecture: From the Renaissance to the Present Day'', (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002), , pp. 276–85.] Dall House (1855) and Helen's Tower (1848) have square-corbelled-on-round towers or turrets. The rebuilding of Balmoral Castle as a baronial palace and its adoption as a royal retreat from 1855 to 1858 by Queen Victoria confirmed the popularity of the style.
This architectural style was often employed for public buildings, such as Aberdeen Grammar School (about 1860). However, it was by no means confined to Scotland and is a fusion of the Gothic revival
Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...
castle architecture first employed by Horace Walpole
Horatio Walpole (), 4th Earl of Orford (24 September 1717 – 2 March 1797), better known as Horace Walpole, was an English writer, art historian, man of letters, antiquarian, and Whig politician.
He had Strawberry Hill House built in Twi ...
for Strawberry Hill Strawberry Hill may refer to:
United Kingdom
*Strawberry Hill, London, England
** Strawberry Hill House, Horace Walpole's Gothic revival villa
**Strawberry Hill railway station
United States
* Strawberry Hill (San Francisco), California
*Strawber ...
and the ancient Scottish defensive tower houses. In the 19th century it became fashionable for private houses to be built with small turrets. Such buildings were dubbed "in Scottish baronial style". In fact the architecture often had little in common with tower houses, which retained their defensive functions and were deficient with respect to 19th-century ideas of comfort. The revival often adapted the style to the needs and technical abilities of a later time.
In Ireland, a young English architect of the York School of Architecture, George Fowler Jones, designed Castle Oliver, a 110-room mansion of about , built in a pink sandstone similar to Belfast Castle. Castle Oliver had all the classic features of the style, including battlements, porte-cochère, crow-stepped gables, numerous turrets, arrow slits, spiral stone staircases, and conical roofs.
This form of architecture was popular in the dominions of the British Empire. In New Zealand it was advocated by the architect Robert Lawson, who designed frequently in this style, most notably at Larnach Castle
Larnach Castle (also referred to as "Larnach's Castle") is a mock castle on the ridge of the Otago Peninsula within the limits of the city of Dunedin, New Zealand, close to the small settlement of Pukehiki. It is one of a few houses of this ...
in Dunedin. Other examples in New Zealand include works by Francis Petre. In Canada, Craigdarroch Castle, British Columbia, was built for Robert Dunsmuir, a Scottish coal baron, in 1890. In Toronto, E. J. Lennox designed Casa Loma in the Gothic Revival
Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...
style for Sir Henry Pellatt, a prominent Canadian financier and industrialist. The mansion has battlements and towers, along with modern plumbing and other conveniences. Another Canadian example is the Banff Springs Hotel in the Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada. The style can also be seen outside the empire at Vorontsov Palace near the city of Yalta, Crimea.
File:Dunrobin_Castle_-Sutherland_-Scotland-26May2008_(2).jpg, Dunrobin Castle
Dunrobin Castle (mostly 1835–1845 — present) is a stately home in Sutherland, in the Highland area of Scotland, as well as the family seat of the Earl of Sutherland and the Clan Sutherland. It is located north of Golspie and approximatel ...
is largely the work of Sir Charles Barry
Sir Charles Barry (23 May 1795 – 12 May 1860) was a British architect, best known for his role in the rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster (also known as the Houses of Parliament) in London during the mid-19th century, but also respon ...
and similar to the ornate conical turrets, foundations and windows of contemporary restorations such as Josselin Castle in Brittany.
File:Victorian Scottish baronial-style tenement turrets, St. Mary's Street, Edinburgh.jpg, Scots-Baronial-style turrets on Victorian tenements in Edinburgh
File:Kirna entrance.jpg, Scots baronial turret above entrance to The Kirna, an 1867 Ballantyne property in Walkerburn, Scottish Borders.
File:Balmoral Castle.jpg, alt=Balmoral Castle. The Royal Standard of Scotland flies over it., Balmoral Castle shows the final Victorian embodiment of the style. A principal keep reminiscent of Craigievar is the middle of the castle, while a large turreted country house is attached.
File:Balmoral Castle - Project Gutenberg 13103.jpg, Balmoral Castle, Royal Deeside
The River Dee ( gd, Uisge Dhè) is a river in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. It rises in the Cairngorms and flows through southern Aberdeenshire to reach the North Sea at Aberdeen. The area it passes through is known as Deeside, or Royal Deeside ...
, Aberdeenshire.
File:Thornhill_Mayne_Memorial,_Alfred_Park,_Allahabad.jpg, Allahabad Public Library, in Prayagraj
Allahabad (), officially known as Prayagraj, also known as Ilahabad, is a metropolis in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.The other five cities were: Agra, Kanpur (Cawnpore), Lucknow, Meerut, and Varanasi (Benares). It is the admini ...
, India
Decline
The popularity of the baronial style peaked towards the end of the nineteenth century, and the building of large houses declined in importance in the twentieth century. The baronial style continued to influence the construction of some estate houses, including Skibo Castle, which was rebuilt from 1899 to 1903 for industrialist Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie (, ; November 25, 1835August 11, 1919) was a Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist. Carnegie led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century and became one of the richest Americans in ...
by Ross and Macbeth.[D. Mays, "Housing: 4 Country seat, c. 1600–Present", in M. Lynch, ed., ''Oxford Companion to Scottish History'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), , pp. 326–8.] Isolated examples included the houses designed by Basil Spence, Broughton Place (1936) and Gribloch (1937–1939), which combined modern and baronial elements.
The 20th-century Scottish baronial castles have the reputation of architectural follies. Among most patrons and architects the style became disfavoured along with the Gothic revival style during the early years of the 20th century.
See also
* List of Gothic Revival architecture
**List of Gothic Revival architects
List of architects involved in the Gothic Revival.
* Truman O. Angell
* John Lee Archer
*James Piers St Aubyn
* Hubert Austin
*William Swinden Barber
* James Oscar Betelle
*Edmund Blacket
*George Frederick Bodley
* Giuseppe Bonavia
* Stephen Dyk ...
* Prospect 100 best modern Scottish buildings
Notes
External links
Freewebs.com
The Scottish baronial: an introduction and illustrations of five notable examples.
Craigends.org.uk
a detailed study of "David Bryce's lost masterpiece", demolished in 1971.
Castle-oliver.com
photographs and history of a recently restored Scottish baronial masterpiece.
{{Gothic
Architecture in Scotland
Scottish baronial
Scottish baronial
16th-century architecture in the United Kingdom
17th-century architecture in the United Kingdom
16th century in Scotland
17th century in Scotland