Publication Account

Date 1951

Event ID 1096069

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1096069

RCAHMS County Inventory: The City of Edinburgh

195. Gate-posts, etc., Grange House, Grange Loan .

The only surviving remains of Grange House, which was demolished in 1936, are the gate-piers of its principal entrance and two late 17th century offices. The gate-piers have now been re-erected at the W. and E. ends of the frontage on Grange Loan, one at the corner of Lover's Lane [NT27SE 2066] and the other 70 yds. W. of the corner of Lauder Road [NT27SE 2067]. They are of early 18th-century date, and are rusticated, enriched, and surmounted with the Lauder griffin. The offices are small buildings of harled rubble, each having two storeys and a pantiled roof and the W. one a forestair with bottle-nosed steps; they stand at what was the N.E. corner of the site, and the service entrance of the house formerly passed southwards between them. Some carved stones from Grange House are also preserved in Huntly House (No. 104, q.v.).

Grange House took its name from the grange or farm of St. Giles' Church, of which it was originally part. It ceased to be Church property in 1335 and by the 16th century it was owned by the family of Cant, from whom it was purchased by Sir William Dick of Braid in 1631. A century later the heiress of Grange married Sir Andrew Lauder of the Fountainhall family, and shortly before her death, which occurred in 1758, this lady disponed her property to Andrew, her eldest surviving son, who thereupon took the maternal surname of Dick. In 1769, however, he inherited his father's title and estate and became Sir Andrew Dick-Lauder, 6th Baronet of Fountainhall and fourth Baron of Grange, ancestor of the late proprietor.

From a modest ‘house with a jamb’, built by Walter Cant in 1592, the mansion grew into a large, lofty and mainly modern structure, incorporating the older house on its N.W. side. The older house comprised a main block of three storeys and an attic running E. and W., to which was attached a rectangular stair-tower on the N. and a ‘jamb’ or wing on the S. in alinement with the E. gable. Within the re-entrant angle, which opened to the S.W., a turret-stair was corbelled out on a conoidal corbelling of nine members. If not an extension, the upper part of this stair must have been rebuilt. The masonry was of harled rubble and the dressings at the voids, where unaltered, had rounded arrises. The original entrance could be seen built up in what had been the original W. wall of the stair tower but was latterly enclosed by a modern addition. Its lintel bore a merchant's mark with the initials M P* in monogram followed by an index hand pointing to an inscription REPOSE ALLEVRS ANNO 1592.The stair within, long since removed, was of scale-and-platt type and rose only to the first floor, from which the ascent was continued by the turret-stair. Above it, where the walls were set out on a continuous encorbellment, lay a series of small chambers, one above the other. The basement floor of the main block was vaulted. The upper floors had all been modernised.

CARVED STONES. When the building was visited in 1936, the following carved stones were noted, but it is not known whether they survived the demolition.

( 1) A small stone bearing a monogram of the initials W D C L, doubtless for William Dick, second Baron of Grange, and his wife Charles Leslie, with the date 1674.

(2) A lintel bearing a monogram of the same initials W D C L.

WOOD CARVING. ln 1936 the National Museum received a donation of pieces of oak panelling from Grange House.

DRAW-WELL. In August 1936 a draw-well, nearly 40 ft. deep and still holding 7 ft. of water, was discovered in the garden on the E. side of the house. Within it, extending from ground level to the water, was a wooden draw-pipe, hollowed from the trunk of a tree and fitted with an iron plunger.

RCAHMS 1951, visited 1936.

*These initials evidently stood for Margaret Preston, grand-daughter of Sir Simon Preston of Craigmillar, who married Walter Cant of St. Giles' Grange about 1582.