Interior General view of original Billiard Room on ground floor Digital image of SU/763
SC 772651
Description Interior General view of original Billiard Room on ground floor Digital image of SU/763
Date 1982
Catalogue Number SC 772651
Category On-line Digital Images
Copy of SU 763
Scope and Content Small dining room, Skibo Castle, Highland This shows the small dining room which may originally have been designed as a billiard room. There are wood carved door surrounds and panelling with an ornately carved dado. The chimneypiece has a grate with tiles decorated with medieval figures. The large mirrored overmantel has niches at each side and a broken pediment with a painting of flowers. An elaborate wrought-iron light fitment hangs from the ceiling which has decorative plasterwork and an ornate plaster cornice. This dining room may have been a breakfasting room or a smaller room in which the family ate their meals. The purpose of a breakfast room was to provide a room which did not smell of the previous night's dinner for the family and guests to eat their first meal of the day. This also meant that the servants had more time to prepare the main dining room for lunch. The main dining room was one of the principal entertaining rooms which were located on the ground floor. 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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Attribution: © RCAHMS
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