Publication Account
Date 1985
Event ID 1016559
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1016559
Kinneil House forms the focal point of a large public park which contains a reconstruction of a Roman fortlet (see no. 67), a museum set in a range of restored 18th century farmbuildings, a ruined medieval church and part of an original James Watt steam engine. The principal attraction, however, is Kinneil House itself which boasts a magnificent series of wall-paintings; it consists of two ranges of buildings set at right angles to one another, which were built and modified over a period of some two centuries.
The earliest building was a late medieval tower-house which lay on the site of the present west range, and all that can now be seen of it are a number of gun-loops incorporated in the rear wall of the later house. In 1553 the Earl of Arran added the present north range, known as the Palace, in order to provide more comfortable accommodation. Arran was obliged to spend the years 1564-9 in exile in France and, during this period, it appears that the tower-house was partly destroyed on the orders of the Earl of Morton. The house assumed its present form in 1670 when Anne, Duchess of Hamilton, began the reconstruction of what was by then a derelict group of buildings. Her remodelling consisted of building a rectangular block on the site of the earlier tower-house to which pavilions were added, the one on the north linking the new block to the Palace. On the south a further new wing was contemplated, which would have balanced the Palace, but it was never built, possibly because of difficulties with its foundations which lay across the line of the ditch of the Antonine Wall.
By the early part of this century the house was again abandoned, and during the course of demolition in 1941 an important series of mural and ceiling paintings were uncovered in the Palace (the only part of the buildings now open to the public). Their discovery spared the house, and they are now on display in the first and second floors.
On the west side of the gully that flanks the house, there are ruins of the medieval church of Kinneil, and part of an unusual medieval cross from the church is on display in the house.
To the south of the house is a building used by James Watt while he was trying to perfect a water-pump for one of the local coalmines. Outside the door there is the cylinder of a Watt engine which has been moved there from a local pit.
A small museum lies to the east of the house and it contains well-displayed collections oflocal Roman material and information relating to the industrial development of West Lothian.
Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: The Clyde Estuary and Central Region’, (1985).
