Interior view of the entrance hall looking westwards towards the door

Description Interior view of the entrance hall looking westwards towards the door

Date 1950 to 1960

Collection Papers of George Hay, architect, Edinburgh, Scotland

Catalogue Number B 38772

Category Photographs and Off-line Digital Images

Copies SC 774370

Scope and Content Hall, Prestonfield House, No 71 Priestfield Road, Edinburgh This shows the hall with its 17th-century black and white marble floor, glazed entrance, arch, balcony with turned wooden balustrade, and Roman Doric fluted columns. The balcony was formed when the stair hall was floored over in the early 19th century, and the original balusters reused on the balcony. Early papers relating to the furnishing of the house describe the ordering of the marble for the hall floor in 1687: 'black and white marbell...Lett the one half be all black, the other half all whaitt', and pictures for the staircase ordered from one Baillie Brand:' good handsome Pictures to be bought in Flanders of Holland, where you think fittest for hanging of my Staire-case...Lett your choyce runn upon Lively Light coloures and not sadd'. Prestonfield House was rebuilt for Sir James Dick in 1687 by the architect Sir William Bruce (c.1630-1710) after being burnt down during a student riot in 1681. A single-storeyed extension was added in c.1830, and in 1890 architects MacGibbon & Ross added a bathroom extension. Within the grounds is an unusual circular stable block built in 1816 to designs by James Gillespie Graham (1777-1855). The house has been run as a hotel since 1959. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

Accession Number 1991/27

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