Publication Account
Date 2008
Event ID 1019594
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1019594
In 1861 James Wolfe Murray employed David Bryce to rebuild his house at Cringletie. Sir Alexander Murray of Blackbarony appears to have built the first house on the site in 1663–6. Although there are reports of the earlier house being torn down, the footprint and the unusual form of the south elevation with its disguised twin gables and odd window arrangement suggests that Bryce remodelled and refaced the earlier building. The reception rooms are on the first floor but look west up the hill rather than south down the valley for the wide view, which is the usual arrangement in Bryce house, for example Portmore House on the other side of the valley. The west elevation is therefore the show front with typical canted bay windows balanced to the north by an oriel window in the original family bedroom suite. The exterior is adorned with various heraldic panels, one dated 1666 which may be taken from the earlier house. A panel on the South elevation is inscribed; ‘WHATEVER ME BEFALL THANKS THE LORD OF ALL’. In 2003 Simpson and Brown added a discreet extension behind a screen wall.
The entrance vestibule retains its Bryce interior whereas the principal rooms and staircase were remodelled c.1904 when George Sutherland married Elizabeth Wolfe Murray whose monograms appear on the Drawing room ceiling. The designer and makers of the elaborate early twentieth century interiors have yet to be identified but it could well be the work of one of the Edinburgh firms such as Scott Morton or Whytock & Reid.
The house does not appear in the RCAHMS Peeblesshire Inventory, but it could be a candidate for study both because of its possible seventeenth century core and the early twentieth century work, which may relate to the RCAHMS collections and the AHRC bid.
There is a Walled Garden to the north of the house, a mid-nineteenth century sundial and an eighteenth century doocot. The absence of nesting boxes and a stringcourse or rat ledge suggests that it may be an adaptation of an earlier building. There are also two lodges, the principal east one being dated 1857.
Information from ‘The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, Commissioners’ Field Meeting 2008'.
