Accessibility

Font Size

100% 150% 200%

Background Colour

Default Contrast
Close Reset

Publication Account

Date 1996

Event ID 1016204

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1016204

Melsetter House and Rysa Lodge on Hoy are William R Lethaby's sole works in Scotland and among his very few creations anywhere, for he was a theoretician rather than a practical architect. At Melsetter he was able to incorporate both the original house, an L-shaped two-storey building of 1738, and some outbuildings into a mellow and intimate country house with paved courtyard and walled gardens. Moreover he was able to inject into the overall design the magic quality and fundamental symbolism of his architectural ideal; the symbolism appears in tangible form as a star and moon carved from stone and two small heart-shaped windows with stone mouldings on the south gable of the east front of the house. The magic quality was cerrainly felt by May Morris, daughter of William Morris who had helped to found the so-called Arrs and Crafts movement in architecture and interior design: she wrote of Melsetter that it seemed ' the embodiment of some of those fairy palaces of which my father wrote with great charm and dignity. Bur, for all its fitness and dignity, it was a place full of homeliness and the spirit of welcome, a very loveable place'.

May Morris was a friend of Theodosia Middlemore, wife of the industrialist who had bought the Melsetter estate and herself embroideress and weaver. Both Middlemores were apptopriate patrons for an idealist like Lethaby and with Melserrer they had provided him with a perfect stimulus. He adopted local traditions of building, harling the exterior walls, using local red sandstone for dressings and Caithness flags for the roof and featuring crowstepped gables, bur adding his own distinctive mark, particularly on the three gables of the garden elevation. The gables are capped with a rose, a heart and a thistle, above T M T for Thomas, Middlemore, Theodosia, and the date 1898. The entrance hall is dominated by a great sandstone chimney-breast, where a finely moulded fireplace is surmounted by five stone corbels designed as rests for candles which would throw into dramatic relief the row of seven coats of arms carved into the stonework above. The visual effect was enhanced by tapestries and silken wallhangings, some of which were made in the Morris workshop.

The south wing of Lethaby's house is the original 18th-century house with its vaulted morning room, and a contemporary square dovecote was incorporated inro the south-west corner of the old walled garden, balanced by a Lethaby tea-house on the south-east corner. He also adapted an 18th century outhouse into a chapel, dedicated to St Colm and St Margaret in 1900 and using fine contemporary stained glass. Above the door are carved a sun, a cross and a moon to symbolize Christ as Lord over the heavens, and the east gable is surmounted by a cross carved as an anchor, as a metaphor of the church as the ship of salvation.

Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: Orkney’, (1996).

People and Organisations

References