Scottish Baronial
In Scotland the
violence and insecurity of the later Middle Ages, especially along the border
with England, meant that tower houses proliferated from the late 14th century
well into the 17th century. What had sprung from necessity developed into a
style.
After the Scottish Parliament abolished papal authority in
1560, there was a surge of national confidence which expressed itself in a
burst of baronial house-building. Within the next decade, the national style
had emerged. Whilst the earlier tower houses were starkly functional, these
baronial mansions were reminiscent of French chateaux of the Loire, with their
turrets and steep roofs. But the Scottish form clung closer to its castle
roots. The stern stem of the house flowers into decorative features along the
roofline. At Claypotts Castle, Dundee, we see the oddest feature of the style -
the gabled round-tower. In the Loire district octagonal towers could
be topped in a similar way.
James V of Scotland (1513-42) had two French brides, the second of whom long survived him and acted as Regent in the youth of her daughter Mary, Queen of Scots. Little wonder then that several French masons were given Court appointments in the 1530s-60s. Their work for the Crown may have inspired courtiers. French details blended with the Scottish vernacular and hints of Romanesque and Gothic to produce some of the most striking of Scottish buildings.
The style was much imitated in the 19th
century. The popular novelist Sir Walter Scott, so fascinated by Scotland's
past, was the first to revive the baronial style in Abbotsford, the house
he built in 1816. Thereafter the style was taken up c.1830 by William Burn
(1789-1870), whose pupil David Bryce (1803-76)
became its most celebrated exponent, creating Craigends House. He trained Charles G.
H. Kinnear (1830-1894) who carried on the tradition in houses such as Threave
(1871).
The style spread across the border into England in the 1850s. It even crossed the Atlantic. But most examples of Scottish Baronial can be found in the country of its birth. Perhaps the most famous is Balmoral Castle, Aberdeenshire, built in 1853-6 as a holiday home for Queen Victoria, who loved the Highlands.
Sources
- Billings, R., Baronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Scotland (1845-1852) provided inspiration for Victorian exponents of the Scottish Baronial style.
- McKean, C., The Scottish Chateau: The country houses of Renaissance Scotland (2001).
- Summerson, J., Architecture in Britain 1530-1830, new edn. (1994), appendix 1: Architecture in Scotland 1530-1707.
- And see castles and country houses.