Publication Account
Date 1996
Event ID 1016393
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1016393
In 1724, the second earl of Aberdeen, William Gordon, in seeking to replace the old House of Kellie at Haddo, whose lands had been in Gordon hands since 1469, obtained a 'draught' from William Adam. It was not until 1731 that work began under the supervision of the Edinburgh mason, John Baxter. The partnership between the pernickety earl, Baxter, and, at a distance, Adam, was not without friction: some details of Adam's draught were altered (principally the insertion of a string course) and Baxter complained that he was 'not to expect a great reward, for the peipell in this cuntry knows bravely how to mak ther mony go far'!
The building that was completed in 1735 is a restrained Palladian design on the Piano nobile principle, the house integrated with its countryside. It is built in the hard local stone and consists of three blocks linked by curved wings or 'quadrants': the entrance was at first-floor level by way of a small double stair. Some alterations were made by Archibald Simpson in the 1820s when the quadrants were heightened and the parapets added. Major alterations took place in 1879/81, by CE Wardrop, when the original curved stairs ro the first-floor entrance were replaced with the present ground-floor entrance hall through the porch and colonnade and considerable redecoration of the interiors was carried out in an early Adam-revival style. The chapel was built between 1876 and 1881 by GE Street, the architect of the London Law Courts.
The most notable rooms are the entrance hall, which has panels painted by John Russell; the AnteRoom, the only room with its original Adam/Baxter panelling, pedimented doorways and Colza oil lamps: it also as a bust of Queen Victoria presented by her to the fourth earl; the Queen's Room, which is light and golden; the Morning Room, with its banana-leaf carpet and view of Giles's garden; the more formal Drawing Room, lined with Van Dykes, a Domenicino and an excellent view of Gight Castle by Giles; the Dining Room and the Library, this last created out of a hay loft in one of the quadrants by the seventh earl, with cedar panelling inlaid with ebony. The Chapel, attached to the north wing, is a calm delight with a barrel roof of light wood and a fine stained glass window by the Pre-Raphaelite Sir Edward Burne-Jones.
The principal apartments overlook a landscape that was deliberately created to delight the eye and to provide entertainment and sport. When George, the fourth earl, came into his inheritance in 1805 he found a treeless waste surrounding a house that had been neglected for 50 years, the third, or 'Wicked' earl having lived away with his three mistresses. However, as that same earl had judiciously increased the estate to 2400 hectares, the means of improvement were to hand. The fourth earl became a zealous improver and is to be remembered for the draining and liming that he promoted and for the cottages, steadings and policies that he created, as much as for his political life which culminated in his unhappy term as Prime Minister from 1852-5 (during which he became embroiled in the Crimean War). With his 80 foresters he planted 14 million trees, while in the 1830s, with the landscape architect and artist, James Giles, he laid out the garden and policies what we see today. Some of the latter are incorporated in the country park that is now run by Aberdeenshire Council.
Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: Aberdeen and North-East Scotland’, (1996).
