Scottish baronial orScots baronial is anarchitectural style of 19th-centuryGothic Revival whichrevived the forms and ornaments of historicalarchitecture of Scotland in the Late Middle Ages and theEarly Modern Period. Reminiscent ofScottish castles, buildings in the Scots baronial style are characterised by elaborate rooflines embellished withconical roofs,tourelles, andbattlements withmachicolations, often with an asymmetric plan.
Popular during the fashion forRomanticism and thePicturesque, Scots baronial architecture was equivalent to theJacobethan Revival of 19th-centuryEngland, and likewise revived the Late Gothic appearance of the fortified domestic architecture of the elites in theLate Middle Ages and thearchitecture of theJacobean era.
Amongarchitects of the Scots baronial style in theVictorian era wereWilliam Burn andDavid Bryce.Romanticism in Scotland coincided with the development ofScottish national identity during the 19th century, and some of the most emblematic country residences of 19th-centuryScotland were built in the style, includingQueen Victoria'sBalmoral Castle andWalter Scott'sAbbotsford. In an urban setting,Cockburn Street, Edinburgh was built wholly in baronial style. Baronial style buildings were typically of stone, whetherashlar ormasonry.
FollowingRobert William Billings'sBaronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Scotland, architectural historians identified the stylistic features characteristic of thebaronial 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 onCharles Rennie Mackintosh'sModern Style architecture.[1] The style was considered a British national idiom emblematic of Scotland, and was widely used for public buildings, country houses, residences andfollies throughout the British Empire. TheScottish National War Memorial, opened in 1927 inEdinburgh Castle, was the last significant building in the baronial style.[2]
The Scottish baronial style is also called Scotch baronial,[3][4] Scots baronial or, merely, baronial style.[5] The name was coined in the 19th century and may come from Robert William Billings's 1852 book,Baronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Scotland.[6] Before that, the style does not seem to have had a name. The buildings constructed during the Scottish baronial revival by far outnumber those of the original Scottish "baronial" castles of the Early Modern Period.
Scottish baronial style drew upon the buildings of theScottish Renaissance. The style of elite residences built bybarons in Scotland developed under the influence ofFrench architecture and the architecture of theCounty of Flanders in the 16th century, which had been abandoned by about 1660.[5][4] The style kept many of the features of the high-rising medieval Gothic castles but introduced Renaissance features.
High and relatively thin-walled medieval fortifications had been made obsolete by gunpowder weapons but were associated with chivalry and the landed nobility. High roofs, towers and turrets were kept for status reasons, and Renaissance elements were introduced. That mainly involved making the windows larger, with straight lintels or round bows, and typically lackingmullions. The style drew ontower houses andpeel towers,[4] retaining many of their external features.French Renaissance style also retained the steep roofs of medieval castles, as can be seen atAzay-le-Rideau (1518), for example, and the original Scottish baronial style might have been influenced by French masons brought to Scotland to work on royal palaces.
Scottish baronial style was quite limited in scope, being mainly for lesser Scottish landlords. The walls of the buildings are usually rubble work, and onlyquoins, window dressings and copings are inashlar. Sculpted ornaments are sparsely used. In most cases the windows lackpediments. The style often usescorbelledprojecting turrets, sometimes calledtourelles,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 a particular feature of the Scottish baronial style. They can be seen atClaypotts,Monea,Colliston,Thirlestane,Auchans,Balvenie, andFiddes.
Such castles or tower houses are typically built on asymmetric plans. Often it is aZ-plan, as at Claypotts Castle (1569–1588), or on an L-plan, as at Colliston. Roof lines are uneven and irregular.
Even in Scotland, the Scottish baronial style coexisted withNorthern Renaissance architecture, which was preferred by wealthier clients.William Wallace's work at the North Range ofLinlithgow Palace (1618–1622) and atHeriot's Hospital (1628–1633) are examples of a contemporaneous Scottish Renaissance architecture. Wallace worked for theCountess of Home atMoray House on Edinburgh'sCanongate, an Anglo-Scottish client who employed the English master masonNicholas 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 withInigo Jones in the later part of the seventeenth century.[4]
European architecture of the 19th century was dominated byrevivals of various historic styles. This current took off in the middle of the 18th century with theGothic Revival in Britain. The Gothic Revival in architecture has been seen as an expression of romanticism and according toAlvin Jackson, the Scots baronial style was "aCaledonian 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 fromWilliam 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 andJames continued their father's approach, with houses such asMellerstain andWedderburn in Berwickshire and Seton House in East Lothian, but most clearly atCulzean 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 andporte-cocheres, are often given the castle treatment. An imitationportcullis 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 wasAbbotsford House,[10] the residence of the novelist and poetSir 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 includedbattlemented gateways,crow-stepped gables, spiral stairs, pointedturrets andmachicolations.[11]Orchardton Castle near Auchencairn, Scotland is a superb example dating from the 1880s.[12]
Important for the dissemination of the style wasRobert Billings's (1813–1874) four-volume workBaronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Scotland (1848–1852).[13] It was applied to many relatively modest dwellings by architects such asWilliam Burn (1789–1870),David Bryce (1803–76),[11]Edward Blore (1787–1879),Edward Calvert (c. 1847–1914) andRobert Stodart Lorimer (1864–1929) and in urban contexts, including the building ofCockburn Street in Edinburgh (from the 1850s) as well as the NationalWallace Monument at Stirling (1859–1869).[14]Dall House (1855) andHelen's Tower (1848) have square-corbelled-on-round towers or turrets. The rebuilding ofBalmoral 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 asAberdeen Grammar School (about 1860). However, it was by no means confined to Scotland and is a fusion of theGothic revival castle architecture first employed byHorace Walpole forStrawberry Hill and the ancient Scottish defensivetower 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, designedCastle Oliver, a 110-room mansion of about 29,000 sq ft (2,700 m2), built in a pink sandstone similar toBelfast 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 architectRobert Lawson, who designed frequently in this style, most notably atLarnach Castle in Dunedin. Other examples in New Zealand include works byFrancis Petre. In Canada,Craigdarroch Castle, British Columbia, was built forRobert Dunsmuir, a Scottish coal baron, in 1890. In Toronto,E. J. Lennox designedCasa Loma in theGothic Revival style for SirHenry Pellatt, a prominent Canadian financier and industrialist. The mansion has battlements and towers, along with modern plumbing and other conveniences. Another Canadian example is theBanff Springs Hotel in the Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada. The style can also be seen outside the empire atVorontsov Palace near the city of Yalta, Crimea.[citation needed]
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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, includingSkibo Castle, which was rebuilt from 1899 to 1903 for industrialistAndrew Carnegie by Ross and Macbeth.[16][17] Isolated examples included the houses designed byBasil Spence,Broughton Place (1936) and Gribloch (1937–1939), which combined modern and baronial elements.[16]
The 20th-century Scottish baronial castles have the reputation ofarchitectural 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]
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...
From the year 1500 to 1660 or therabouts, Scotland adopted the sterner features of French and Flemish residences, and so cleverly mingled their peculiarities with the castellated architecture of their own growth as to produce a baronial style peculiar to the country.
Abbotsford (...), with its angle-turrets and crowsteps, foreshadows the early Victorian revival of the Scottish Baronial style ...
