Interior View of ground floor lavatory opposite Library

Description Interior View of ground floor lavatory opposite Library

Date 1982

Catalogue Number SU 793

Category Photographs and Off-line Digital Images

Copies SC 772669

Scope and Content Lavatory on ground floor, Skibo Castle, Highland This shows a lavatory on the ground floor opposite the library. The room has a mosaic floor with a marble inset underneath the decorative pan which has a wooden seat. The toilet is flushed by pulling the wooden handle on a chain (on left) which releases water from the high level cistern down the pipe and into the pan. The tiled walls of the room would be easy for the maids to clean. The Twyford 'wash-out' was invented in the 1870s and was the first pan which was flushed only by the power of flowing water and did not rely on valves. The 'wash-down' improved on this design with an S-bend below the pan. This meant that water flowing from the cistern above forced waste from the pan through the S-bend and into the drain. Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) was born in Scotland and made a fortune in the steel industry in the United States of America. Once his daughter was born he decided that she should have a Scottish home, and at the end of the 19th century he bought a large Baronial house at Skibo built in 1880 by Clarke & Bell. In addition to the £85,000 purchase price, he spent a further £2 million in the creation of an even larger mansion, constructed between 1899 and 1903 to the designs of Ross & Macbeth. In 1981 his daughter Margaret decided to sell the estate, and the castle lay empty until 1990 when Peter de Savary paid £10 million for the castle and the 2,832-hectare estate. Some £30 million was then invested in its transformation into the Carnegie Club, a private residential golf and sporting club. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

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