Scottish baronial architecture

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The sheriff court in Greenock (1869) is a typical Scottish Baronial building with crow-stepped gables and
corbelled corner turrets.

Scottish baronial or Scots baronial is an architectural style of 19th century Gothic Revival 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 and the Picturesque, Scots
baronial architecture was equivalent to the Jacobethan Revival of 19th-century England, and likewise
revived the Late Gothic appearance of the fortified domestic architecture of the elites in the Late Middle
Ages and the architecture of the Jacobean era.

Among architects of the Scots baronial style in the Victorian era were William Burn and David Bryce.
Romanticism in Scotland coincided with a Scottish national identity during the 19th century, and some of
the most emblematic country residences of 19th-century Scotland were built in this style, including
Queen Victoria's Balmoral Castle and Walter Scott'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 or masonry.

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 architecture.[1] 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 was the last significant monument of the baronial style, built 1920 in Edinburgh Castle
after World War I.[2]

Contents

1 Revival and name

2 Predecessors
3 Scottish baronial

4 Decline

5 See also

6 Notes

7 External links

Revival and name

Scrabo Tower, a folly in Newtownards, County Down by architects Lanyon and Lynn (1858)

The Scottish baronial style is also called Scotch baronial,[3][4] Scots baronial or just baronial style.[5] 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.[6] 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

See also: Renaissance in Scotland § Architecture

Claypotts Castle consists of a rectangular central block with two round towers crowned by square garret
chambers. The corners of these chambers or cap-houses are strongly corbelled out over the round form
and have crow-stepped gables.

Scottish baronial style drew upon the buildings of the Scottish Renaissance. The style of elite residences
built by barons in Scotland developed under the influence of French architecture and the architecture of
the County of Flanders in the 16th century and was abandoned by about 1660.[5][4] 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,[4] 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 corbelled turrets sometimes
called tourelles, bartizans 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, Thirlestane, Auchans, Balvenie, 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 on Edinburgh's
Canongate, an Anglo-Scottish client who employed the English master mason Nicholas Stone at her
London house in Aldersgate.[7]

The baronial style as well as the Scottish Renaissance style finally gave way to the grander English forms
associated with Inigo Jones in the later part of the seventeenth century.[4]

Scottish baronial

European architecture of the 19th century was dominated by revivals of various historic styles. This
current took off in the middle of the 18th century with the Gothic Revival 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 Caledonian reading of the gothic".[8] 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 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.[9]

Large windows of plate glass are not uncommon. Bay windows often have their individual roofs adorned
by pinnacles and crenulations. Porches, porticos 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.[citation needed]
Important for the adoption of the style in the early nineteenth century was Abbotsford House,[10] the
residence of the novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott. 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 and machicolations.
[11] Orchardton Castle near Auchencairn, Scotland is a superb example dating from the 1880s.[12]

Important for the dissemination of the style was Robert Billings' (1813–1874) four-volume work Baronial
and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Scotland (1848–52).[13] It was applied to many relatively modest
dwellings by architects such as William Burn (1789–1870), David Bryce (1803–76),[11] 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 at Stirling (1859–1869).[14] 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.[15]

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
castle architecture first employed by Horace Walpole for Strawberry Hill 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.[citation needed] 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 29,000 sq ft (2,700 m2), 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.[citation
needed]

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 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 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.[citation needed]
Dunrobin Castle is largely the work of Sir Charles Barry and similar to the ornate conical turrets,
foundations and windows of contemporary restorations such as Josselin Castle in Brittany.

Scots-Baronial-style turrets on Victorian tenements in Edinburgh

Scots baronial turret above entrance to The Kirna, an 1867 Ballantyne property in Walkerburn, Scottish
Borders.

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.

Balmoral Castle, Royal Deeside, Aberdeenshire.

Allahabad Public Library, in Prayagraj, India

Decline

Rear of the Scottish National War Memorial (1920) in Edinburgh Castle

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.[16] 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 by Ross and Macbeth.[16][17] Isolated examples included the
houses designed by Basil Spence, Broughton Place (1936) and Gribloch (1937–1939), which combined
modern and baronial elements.[16]

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.[citation needed]

See also

icon Architecture portal

List of Gothic Revival architecture

List of Gothic Revival architects

Prospect 100 best modern Scottish buildings

Notes

Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Masterpieces of Art by Gordon Kerr. Page 8

Glendinning, Miles; MacKechnie, Aonghus (2019). Scotch Baronial: Architecture and National Identity in
Scotland. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 4. ISBN 978-1-4742-8348-9.

MacKechnie, Aoughus; Glendinning, Miles (2019). Scotch Baronial - The Architecture of Scotland and
Unionist Nationalism. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1474283472.

Summerson, J. (1993). Architecture in Britain, 1530 to 1830 (9th ed.). New Haven, Connecticut: Yale
University Press. pp. 502–511. ISBN 0300058861. Within the decade 1560–70, an unmistakable national
style emerged—the style which the nineteenth century christened, affectionately, 'Scotch Baronial'. It
continued to develop, and held its ground for about a hundred years...

Billings, Robert William (1852). The Baronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Scotland, Volume 1 (1901
ed.). Edinburg: Oliver & Boyd. p. 6. Retrieved