Estate houses in Scotland

The origins of Scottish estate houses are in aristocratic emulation of the extensive building and rebuilding of royal residences, beginning with Linlithgow, under the influence of Renaissance architecture.

After the Restoration (1660) the work of architect Sir William Bruce introduced to Scotland a new phase of classicising architecture, in the shape of royal palaces and estate houses incorporating elements of the Palladian style.

The incorporation of "Gothick" elements of medieval architecture by William Adam helped launch a revival of the Scots baronial in the nineteenth century, given popularity by its use at Walter Scott's Abbotsford House and Queen Victoria's retreat at Balmoral Castle.

After the Reformation, and the departure of the Scottish court in 1603, artists and artisans looked to secular patronage and estate houses became repositories of art and of elaborate furnishings.

The Baronial revival resulted a synthesised Victorian style that combined elements of the Renaissance, symbols of landed power and national affiliation with modern fittings.

It kept features of the high walled Medieval castles that had been made largely obsolete by gunpowder weapons and may have been influenced by the French masons brought to Scotland to work on royal palaces.

Palladio's ideas were strongly based on the symmetry, perspective and values of the formal classical temple architecture of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, and associated in England with the designs of Inigo Jones.

Smith's country houses followed the pattern established by William Bruce, with hipped roofs and pedimented fronts, in a plain but handsome Palladian style.

[18] Scotland produced some of the most significant architects of this era, including Colen Campbell (1676–1729), James Gibbs (1682–1754) and William Adam (1689–1748), who created work that to some degree looked to classical models.

The decline in numbers of servants, linked to the introduction of electricity, central heating and labour-saving devices such as the vacuum cleaner, also led to changes in the scale of building.

[35] The baronial style continued to influence the construction of some estate houses, including Skibo Castle, which was rebuilt for industrialist Andrew Carnegie (1899–1903) by Ross and Macbeth.

Isolated examples included the houses designed by Basil Spence and built at Broughton Place (1936) and Gribloch (1937–39), which combined modern and traditional elements.

[41] The designs relied upon continental pattern books that often led to the incorporation of humanist moral and philosophical symbolism, as well as elements that called on heraldry, piety, classical myths and allegory.

[48] Henry Raeburn (1756–1823) was the most significant artist of the eighteenth century to pursue his entire career in Scotland, and from this point Scottish painters would be able to be professionals in their homeland, often supplying the nobility and lairds with works to fill the walls of their houses.

Some of the finest domestic wood carving is in the Beaton panels made for Arbroath Abbey, which were eventually moved to the dining room of Balfour House in Fife.

[57] The origins of this style were in Scott's Abbotsford, where the author began the incorporation of actual old architectural fragments and pieces of furniture on a lavish scale (the effective beginning of 'antique' collecting in Scotland).

Extensive gardens were developed at Pinkie House by Alexander Seton, 1st Earl of Dunfermline (1555–1622), with lawns, fountains, ponds and aviaries for the entertainment of guests.

The best surviving garden from the early seventeenth century is that at Edzell Castle, where, between 1604 and 1610, David Lindsay (1551?–1610) created an enclosure adorned with sculptures of the seven Cardinal Virtues, the seven Liberal Arts and the seven Planetary Deities, the expense of which eventually bankrupted him.

[60] The Earl of Mar's palace at Alloa was the grandest realisation of the Versailles style gardens in Scotland: it included canals, parterres, statues and ornamental trees.

[62] The antiquarian John Clerk of Pennycuik (1676–1755), one of the key figures in defining elite taste in Scotland, eulogising the estate garden in his poem "The Country Seat" (1727), which built on the ideas of Alexander Pope.

The move to a less formal landscape of parklands and irregular clumps of planting, associated in England with Capability Brown (1716–83), was dominated in Scotland by his followers, Robert Robinson and Thomas White senior and junior.

This resulted in creation of features like Ossian's Hall of Mirrors at the Hermitage Dunkeld and the Hermit's Cave at the Falls of Acharn, which put an emphasis on concealment and the surprise revelation of the natural.

New plants from around the world, often discovered and sampled by Scots, such as the Rhododendron and monkey puzzle tree, meant that Victorian and Edwardian gardens were characterised by an eclectic mix of the formal, picturesque and gardenesque.

By the end of the century the ideas of William Robinson (1838–1935), Gertrude Jekyll (1843–1932) and the Edinburgh-based Frances Hope (d. 1880), arguing for informal flower-based gardens, had begun to dominate.

The first family wing in Britain was added to Blairquhan Castle in Ayrshire in 1820 by architect William Burn and the style became characteristic of the Victorian country house.

From the 1830s distinct male areas of the house began to emerge, to which the men could withdraw and indulge in "masculine" conversation and activities, centred on the smoking and billiard rooms.

[69] The popularity of salmon fishing, deer stalking and grouse shooting, particularly in the Highlands, was confirmed by Queen Victoria's purchase of the hunting lodge at Balmoral.

It rapidly expanded as southern industrialists and businessmen began to see the sports offered by Scottish estates as a status symbol, such as the Spelsbury Family at Dunmavarie in the 1920s.

[70] There were also a wider range of activities that developed in the nineteenth century for members of the leisured classes, such as croquet, lawn tennis, billiards, carriage rides, charades and amateur dramatics.

[71] In the twentieth century, as the finances and needs of the landed classes changed, many surviving country houses were sold and became boarding schools, hospitals, spa retreats, conference centres and hotels.