View of house from SE including detail of S sundial.

Description View of house from SE including detail of S sundial.

Date 5/1995

Catalogue Number C 54013 CN

Category Photographs and Off-line Digital Images

Copies SC 772371

Scope and Content Newbattle Abbey house and sundial from the south-east, Midlothian This shows the four-storeyed house with its curving gables, dormers and tripartite windows which were added by architect William Burn in 1836. In front of the main building are the Italianate gardens with their clipped hedges, paths and shrubs. In the foreground is one of a pair of 17th-century sundials. The Newbattle sundials date from 1635 and stand 5m high. They feature a stepped octagonal base, octagonal dial supported by winged sphinxes (mythical creatures with women's heads, lion's bodies, and, occasionally, wings), surmounted by an obelisk finial. Complex carved sundials like these are often found as the focal points of formal gardens. Newbattle Abbey was founded by Cistercian monks in 1140, and its church dedicated to St Mary in 1233-4. It became a private residence in 1587 when the last abbot, Mark Kerr, converted to Protestantism and was able to retain his lands. His son became Lord Newbattle in 1596. The remains of the abbey are built into the surviving house, which was modified and rebuilt by the architects John Mylne (1650), William Burn (1836) and David Bryce (1858). The house was gifted to the nation in 1937 to be used as a further education college. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

Medium Colour negative

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