Interior-general view of Sitting Room showing collection of porcelain

Description Interior-general view of Sitting Room showing collection of porcelain

Date 1903

Collection Records of Bedford Lemere and Company, photographers, London, England

Catalogue Number SC 736829

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of BL 17907

Scope and Content Library, Finlaystone House, Inverclyde (presently the home of the Chief of the Clan MacMillan and his family) Finlaystone House, originally built as a tower-house for the Dennistoun family in the late 14th century, was rebuilt and extended in 1746 by John Douglas as a handsome early Georgian mansion house for William, 12th Earl of Glencairn. In 1898-1903 the house was remodelled and refurbished in a grand style by the architect, Sir John James Burnet, for George Kidston, chairman of the Clyde Shipping Company. The interior was photographed by the architectural photographer, Harry Bedford Lemere, shortly after the refurbishment was completed in 1903. The bow-windowed library in the west front was the main room of Douglas' Georgian house. Burnet raised the height by installing a deeply coved ceiling (one of his classic architectural features), and fitted the walls with half-bookcases to allow the display of china and Kidston's extensive art collection. He also retained the original magnificent black marble Rococo chimneypiece (left). In 1900 a huge 350 year-old yew tree, under which, according to tradition, John Knox celebrated the first reformed communion in the West of Scotland in 1556, was moved from outside the bow window to allow more light to enter the room. The difficulties in its removal were enormous, but the job was eventually done by an American firm using a trench, some railway lines and a team of horses. Today the tree thrives quite happily some 40m to the south-west of the house. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

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File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap