Publication Account
Date 1951
Event ID 1097264
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1097264
94. Queensberry House, 64 Canongate.
For over a century this lofty and massive structure has been a "House of Refuge for the Destitute" and a home for the aged, but its early inhabitants were men of rank and estate. The grounds, which still run from the Canongate to Holyrood Road, were acquired in 1680 by Charles Maitland, brother and ultimate successor to John, 2nd Earl and 1st Duke of Lauderdale, and laird of Hatton by marriage. In the following year Lord Hatton, then a Senator of the College of Justice, built himself a "lodging" in the city, incurring the animosity of the burghal tradesmen by importing country masons. The “lodging” in question seems to have been Queensberry House, since Lord Hatton disponed the property in 1686 to William, 1st Duke of Queensberry while the charter of 1688 (1) specifies "the great mansion with garden and orchard, enclosed in a stone wall, with stables and other offices, kitchen brewery, etc., on the west."* The house must therefore have been in existence by this time. In the Forty-five it sheltered wounded officers of the Jacobite anny, and in consequence it is of interest to mention that a portrait of the Young Pretender, considered to be an almost contemporary copy of Strange's painting, was discovered here. In 1761 the house was occupied by John, 3rd Earl of Glasgow, and from 1773 to 1803 by Sir James Montgomerie. The Board of Ordnance purchased the place in 1803, and in 1808 the house was remodelled as barracks, which fact accounts for the strictly utilitarian appearance that it has worn since that time. It is interesting to find that the working drawings made for the alterations have been preserved, and some of them are reproduced in [RCAHMS 1951] Fig. 320. Speaking of the former appearance of the house Sir Daniel Wilson says (2): "The whole building was then a storey lower than it is at present. The wings were surmounted with neat ogee roofs. The centre had a French [mansard] roof, with storm windows, in the style of the palace of Versailles and the chimney stalks were sufficiently ornamented to add to the general effect of the building, so that the whole appearance of the mansion, though plain, was perfectly in keeping with the residence of a nobleman and the representative of majesty. The internal decorations were of the most costly description, including very richly carved marble chimneypieces. On the house being dismantled many of these were purchased by the Earl of Wemyss, for completing his new mansion of Gosford House, near Edinburgh."
On plan the house includes a main block running E. and W. with two parallel wings projecting northwards at right angles, one being in alinement with the W. gable but the other one some way W. of the E. gable; in addition to these, two low square wings are attached to the S. corners. The last are still three-storeyed, as formerly, but their ogee roofs have been replaced by hipped roofs. The other parts, of four storeys on the N. side but of five storeys elsewhere owing to the slope of the ground, are now, as Sir Daniel Wilson says, a storey higher than at first. Between the two N. wings runs a rusticated porch with a central moulded doorway flanked by windows and surmounted by four blind windows. The gables of these wings have rusticated quoins. All the original windows have back-set and chamfered margins, while the later ones lack the chamfer. The masonry is rubble prepared for harling. Internally there has necessarily been much reconstruction, and the only remaining features of any special interest are two barrel-vaulted compartments running E. and W. on the ground floor near the middle of the building. Recently, however, the remains of two large kitchen-fireplaces have been exposed side by side in the W. wall of Male Ward No. 2; this ward, in which the floor level has been raised, was the kitchen of the Officers' Mess in 1808, and it can now be further identified by its fireplaces as the kitchen of Queensberry's time. Hence, if the tale related by Chambers' has a basis of fact, this room must have been the scene of the tragedy enacted in 1707.
RCAHMS 1951, visited c.1941
(1) Canongate Chartulary (MS. City Chambers, Edin.), vol. v, 1633-71, fol. 155. (2) Memorials, ii, p. 80. (3) Traditions of Edinburgh, i, pp. 286-8
*The property is granted in free regality, and is thus placed outside the jurisdiction of the Canongate bailies.
