James Gowans (architect)

Born in Blackness near Linlithgow he was the son of a local mason Walter Gowans (1791–1858) and his wife, Isabella Grott (d.1854).

He suffered serious financial losses in 1875 due to heavy investment in his own project of the New Theatre Edinburgh, with Frederick Thomas Pilkington as co-investor.

He became Edinburgh's Lord Dean of Guild in 1885 (holding the post until 1890)[3] and was largely responsible for organising the International Exhibition of Industry, Science and Art on The Meadows in 1886.

He was forced to sell Rockville his masterpiece home and moved to a very modest house at 1 Blantyre Terrace where he died.

It was demolished in 1966 after a public outcry and 2500 signature petition attempted to save it (a rarity in those non-conservation-minded days) and replaced by three blocks of flats completed in 1972 ("The Limes").

However, one statue was removed and now sits on the lower path in West Princes Street Gardens: "The Genius of Architecture crowned by the Theory and Practice of Art".

[6] A plain roof is modulated by rows of hungry corbels, tall ashlar chimney stacks and a gradual change in stone from coarse masonry to random rubble.

More interesting are the steading, cartshed, dairy and cottage, in more mature Gowans style; panelled façade, the rubble completely variegated, different coloured, each stone in its allotted bed.

West Lothian Council's newly-established Lowland Crofting scheme[7] provided a solution, with permission for eleven new houses at Craigengall at the other end of the farm, granted on condition the house and steading buildings were released for restoration and a third of the farmland put into woods walks and wildlife for community benefit.