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The beginnings of the architectural profession in Scotland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Howard Colvin
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Extract

In Scotland, as in England, architecture was not a fully-developed profession until well into the nineteenth century. There were, of course, some able practitioners of architecture in Scotland in the eighteenth century, but few if any of them were professional architects in the sense in which their Victorian successors would understand the term. Many of them were builders before they were architects, and even those who were primarily architects might on occasion act as building contractors. Far away in London their compatriots Robert and James Adam might insist (in their dealings with a client) that ‘it is of little consequence to us, what the practice is, among professional builders. We are not builders by profession, but Architects & Surveyors, & live by those Branches’. But even in London it was with difficulty that an architect could sustain such pretensions in the 1770s. In Edinburgh it would have been impossible. Sixty or seventy years were to elapse before the posture adopted by the Adam brothers became the norm, before architectural practice in Scotland had progressed from a situation in which both design and execution were in the same hands — those of the master craftsmen — to one in which design had become the exclusive business of the architect. Those sixty or seventy years also saw the gradual emancipation of the architect from the patronage which had nurtured him in the eighteenth century, so that by the middle of the nineteenth century he had achieved the economic independence of a professional man and the social status of a gentleman.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 29 , 1986 , pp. 168 - 182
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1986

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References

Notes

1 Sotheby’s Catalogue of MSS and Historical Documents, 22-23 July 1985; the Townley Papers, quotation from letter from R. and J. Adam to Charles Townley, 1777-79.

2 See the chapter on ‘The Architectural Personality of Wales’ in Peter Smith’s Houses of the Welsh Countryside (HMSO, 1978).

3 That of Edward Haycock (1790-1870), for whom see my Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840 (1978).

4 Carlyle, A., Anecdotes and Characters of the Times, ed. Kinsey, J. (1973), 17, 184Google Scholar. For a Scottish gardener in French service see T. Blaikie, Diary of a Scottish Gardener, ed. F. Birrell (1931).

5 See the list of office-holders in History of the King’s Works, ed. Colvin, , v (1976)Google Scholar, Appendix D.

6 For the Scottish Works see Accounts of the Masters of Works, 1, ed. Paton, (1957, ), 11 Google Scholar, ed. Imrie and Dunbar (1982); Dunbar, J. G., ‘The Palace of Holyroodhouse during the first half of the sixteenth century’, Archaeological Journal, CXX (1963)Google Scholar; and my Biographical Dictionary, 984.

7 Colvin, Howard, ‘A Scottish Origin for English Palladianism?’, Architectural History, XVII (1974)Google Scholar.

8 Biographical Dictionary, 573.

9 For Inveraray Castle and its progeny see Ian G. Lindsay and Mary Cosh, Inveraray and the Dukes of Argyll (1973). Dalmeny House, designed by William Wilkins, was the prototype of a number of similar country houses built in Scotland in the early nineteenth century.

10 The two other competitions were for the Burns Monument at Dumfries (1814-15), won by T. F. Hunt, and for St David’s Church, Glasgow (1824), won by Rickman and Hutchinson.

11 The only significant exception is Thomas Harrison of Chester, who designed two country houses in Scotland, but he, although based on a county town, had a national reputation as a Greek Revivalist.

12 Dobson, Margaret J., A Memoir of John Dobson (1885), 15 Google Scholar.

13 For a list of Paterson’s works see my Dictionary, 624.

14 Artificers undertaking both wright’s and mason’s work, apparently in their own persons are, however, mentioned at Glasgow in 1600 ( Knoop, D. and Jones, G. P., The Scottish Mason and the Mason Word (Manchester, 1939), 67 Google Scholar), and the mason William Adam, who regularly contracted to build houses for a ‘slump sum’ (i.e. what in England would be called ‘by the great’) seems sometimes to have engaged wrights himself to perform the carpentry, while sub-contracting the plumber’s and joiner’s work.

15 Hermione Hobhouse, Thomas Cubitt, Master Builder (1971).

16 Youngson, A.J., The Making of Classical Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1966), 100-01Google Scholar.

17 Ibid., 144-45. Lorimer is described as ‘Builder’ in contemporary directories.

18 Knoop, D. and Jones, G. P., The Scottish Mason and the Mason Word (Manchester, 1939), 64 Google Scholar.

19 Records of St Mary’s Chapel in Edinburgh City Archives, esp. vols 1 (1669-86) and 2 (1686-96), passim.; Carr, H., The Mason and the Burgh (Margate, 1954), 52 Google Scholar.

20 Miller, Robert, The Edinburgh Dean of Guild Court (Edinburgh, 1896), 21–38 Google Scholar and the records of the Court, for access to which I am indebted to Mr W. H. Makey, the archivist of the City of Edinburgh. In Glasgow the Dean of Guild Court did not obtain jurisdiction over building until 1728 ( Murray, David, Early Burgh Organisation in Scotland (Glasgow 1924), 1, 495 Google Scholar).

21 Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh 1689-1701 (1962), 293; 1701-1718 (1967), 144.

22 Colvin, Biographical Dictionary, 153.

23 For Clerk see the works cited ibid., 221.

24 Ibid., 755.

25 For the brothers Adam in Italy see John Fleming, Robert Adam and his Circle (1962).

26 For the careers of all these men see my Dictionary.

27 Basil Skinner, , Scots in Italy in the 18th Century (National Galleries of Scotland, 1966)Google Scholar.

28 Ninth Annual Report of the Council of the Scottish Academy (1836), 16.

29 As early as 1729 an abortive attempt had been made by a group of artists and others which included Allan Ramsay and William Adam to establish a ‘public academy’ of arts in Edinburgh in which instruction would be given to students of painting, sculpture and architecture (see the agreement printed in Edinburgh Annual Register, IX (1816), cccclxxiii).

30 The short-lived Edinburgh Exhibition Society (c. 1815) was an attempt to meet this need.

31 For the Smiths of Darnick see my Dictionary, and for the Stirlings David Walker’s article in the Bulletin of the Scottish Georgian Society, 1 (1972).

32 Petition for William Lord Braco against Mr William Adams Architect (1743), 5.

33 Depositions of Witnesses in the Cause William Adams Architect in Edinburgh against William Lord Braco (1743), 16.

34 Petition as above, 5.

35 Seejohn Paterson’s statement of his charges (1796) in SRO, GD 24/1/624, and William Stark’s letter (1811) to Sir Walter Scott in National Library of Scotland, MS 3880, fol. 166.

36 See James Playfair’s statement of his charges (1785 and 1790) in SRO, GD 151/11/32, William Burn’s (1827) in SRO, GD 250/41/3, and W. H. Playfair’s (1842) in his Letter-Book No. 7 (229-30) in Edinburgh University Library.

37 SRO, HR 570/1, the Heritors’ minute-book.

38 SRO, HR 649/1, the Heritors’ minute-book.

39 The main source of information about the foundation of both Institutes is the Buccleuch archives, now deposited in the Register House in Edinburgh. The relevant papers will be found in GD 224/510/3 and 650/7. The leading Fellows of the 1850 Institute were David Rhind and George Smith of Edinburgh and Charles Wilson and James Smith of Glasgow. The Secretaries were W. A. Parker (a layman) and J. Dick Peddie. W. H. Playfair, Thomas Hamilton and James Gillespie Graham, all of whom had been on the committee of the 1840 Institute, maintained what the Builder called ‘an apathetic neutrality’ towards its successor (Builder 1850, 193, 565). The reasons for this are not altogether clear, but by 1850 Graham was an old man in his seventies, and Playfair (always an individualist) was in very poor health, while Hamilton was devoting all his energies to the Royal Scottish Academy, of which he was Treasurer. As for Burn and Bryce, the reason for their abstention is obvious. Both were already Fellows of the Institute of British Architects in London. At Glasgow an Architectural Society was founded in 1858, chiefly by local members of the Architectural Institute of Scotland. Like the latter, it admitted builders and laymen to membership. The Glasgow Institute of Architects was founded in 1868.