Menelaws achieved success in the first two decades of the 19th century as the designer of town and country residences and parks of Razumovsky and Stroganov families, and later worked for emperor Alexander I, specializing in Gothic Revival architecture.

73 craftsmen, including Adam Menelaws, agreed to move to Russia (many took their families with them), causing a futile protest of the Foreign Office.

[9] Menelaws signed for a three-year contract to build the Cold Baths near Saint Petersburg, agreeing also to train a class of Russian craftsmen.

Apparently the number of Scottish professionals was too big for Cameron, and one year later Menelaws left him and joined the service of Nikolay Lvov.

[9] Instead of architecture, in May 1785 Lvov engaged Menelaws and William Heste in search for coal fossils (at that time Russian metallurgy was dependent on either charcoal or imports from England and Wales).

[12] Another Scot, Walter Irving, was employed by Lvov to construct his idealist Sun Temple, a country estate in Tver Oblast; its circular arcade, resembling the henges of Britain, was later recreated in Menelaws' own designs.

[13] Menelaws married Elizabeth Cave in 1792; the ceremony was attended by Lvov, Alexey Olenin (president of the Imperial Academy of Arts) and numerous members of the English and Scottish diaspora.

The work started with landscaping the territory and digging two large artificial pools; after Alexander's death, Nicholas commissioned Menelaws to build his summer residence, the asymmetrical Cottage.

[25] The park, laid down in English style, featured winding walkways around ponds, and had a Gothic Chapel (private church of the House of Romanov, designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel) as its focal point (it was completed by Ludwig Charlemagne three years after Menelaws' death).

[26] The park also had facilities of the lesser rank: an animal sanctuary for old horses retired from the palace service, a farm and a menagerie with llama and elephant pavilions.