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Publication Account
Date 1986
Event ID 1017153
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1017153
Of all William Adam's creations, this is the most assertive, the most brash, certainly when compared with the calmness of Had do (no. 3), which he was also building at this time. The explanation lies in Adam's ability to interpret his client's demands and temperament. In William Braco, MP, one of the richest men in the north-east (as a result of his father's banking business), Adam had a client who was determined to impress, if not daunt, his fellow mortals. Created Lord Braco in 1735 and earl of Fife in 1759,Braco and his descendants were a family in a hurry: 'from bonnet lairds to dukes in 150 years' it has been said. Adam responded brilliantly to his patron's pretensions, giving him a building that is swaggering, vainglorious and intimidating: work began in 1730.
Built in an extravagant baroque style, the house consists of a square block of three storeys and a full basement. It is entered up a double curving staircase. The principal feature of the front is a group off our Corinthian pilasters topped by a sculpture-fllled pediment and a balustrade. This block is flanked and oversailed by square corner towers that thrust upwards and outwards from the main facade. The effect is dramatic and reminiscent of some of Vanbrugh's creations. The verticality of the design, to which the pilasters make a major contribution, is emphasised by the isolation of the house. Adam originally intended that pavilions should flank the main block, sitting forward from it and linked to it by curving colonnades. That these were never built was due to a dispute between Adam and Braco in 1736 over the cost of shipping the carved Corinthian capitals from Queensferry. It was still unresolved on Adam's death in 1748. Although the house was roofed by 1739, such was Braco's bitterness that he never lived in it and would draw down the blinds of his coach whenever he passed it.
The visitor should stand before the house on the south lawn and note the overall layout, and details such as the sculpture in the pediment, the lead figures of Mars, Diana and Orpheus above and the urns placed on the balustrade yet higher above. On entering the house the height of the rooms is at once striking and daunting. The delicate plaster ceiling mouldings and the gold leaf on the doors of the first floor are fme rococo work (completed by the second earl), yet for all this refmement the overall effect is strangely lifeless.
The house was eventually occupied by the second earl and his descendants. As part of the break-up of the Fife estates, it was gifted to the burghs of Macduff and Banffin 1906 and its contents sold in 1907. It was used as a hotel, nursing home and army billet, being rescued by the then Ministry of Works in 1956.
Such a grand house had originally a large and impressive park, mostly created by the second earl. Some of the features of this park can still be seen on the riverside walk to the south of the house. There is a fine icehouse and the mausoleum built by the second earl, for which he had two tombstones removed from Cullen kirk (no. 50) and their dates altered to give his family a spurious antiquity. (These stones have since been returned to Cullen, but a third, which he removed from St Mary's, Banffis still against the back wall: it is probably the tomb of a 17th century provost of Banff.) The track winds on to the bridge of Alvah, a magnificent structure of 1772.
Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: Grampian’, (1986).
