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Field Visit
Date 8 September 1920
Event ID 1114418
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1114418
Old Castle, Saughton Mills or Stenhopes Mills.
Originally this was the large and commodious mansion of Patrick Eleis or Ellis, a merchant and burgess of Edinburgh (1); it is now reduced, slightly in area and greatly in degree, as it provides labourers' dwellings. It was built, as a date above the entrance indicates, in 1623, on a pleasant and open site bordered by the Water of Leith. Farm and mill buildings enclose the site on north, east, and south.
On plan, the structure shows a three-storeyed main block, which measures 72 ½ feet from north to south, by 21 feet 10 inches from east to west. From this main portion two wings project 16 ½ feet westwards; one, two-storeyed, is in continuation of the south gable, the other, which is carried a storey higher, is centrally situated, and contains the entrance at its north re-entrant angle. The structure was harled, and is built of rubble, mainly freestone, with polished freestone quoins and dressings. The windows have back-set margins and are chamfered at jambs and lintel, but the entrance to the house, and the entrance which adjoins it and gives access to the western cellar of the north wing, are more elaborately treated. These have well-moulded Renaissance architraves, and the continuous cornice which surmounts them is carried as a string-course along the wall.
On the plane surface of the architrave round the house is inscribed: BLISIT . BE . GOD . FOR . AL . HIS . GIFTIS. Above this door is an armorial panel within a moulded border supported by scrolled trusses enriched with a vine motif. On the panel is a scrolled cartouche, bearing a shield charged with a sword in bend, point uppermost, between two helmets in profile, for Ellis of Saughton. The panel is initialled P. E. for Patrick Ellis, and dated 1623. The first floor windows of the north wing have been grated, and two windows still retain the iron grilles. The gables throughout are crow-stepped and have moulded skew-puts; the chimney copes also are moulded.
Midway along the east lateral wall there are traces of a wing, which once projected eastwards to match the existing northern wing, and against the northern wing there has been a low building parallel to the northern portion of the main block. The entrance thus lay within a courtyard, which to the north may have been either open or else enclosed by a boundary wall pierced by an arched. gateway. The eastern wing was demolished within living memory; the western outbuilding is represented only by its east wall.
Internally there is little of interest. On the basement-floor was the kitchen with its offices; on the first floor were the public rooms, and on the upper floor the bedrooms. The wings contain one chamber on each floor, but the northern also houses the main staircase, a turnpike, which ascends to the first floor only; access from this level to the upper floor is by a small turret-stair, mainly mural but with a slight external projection within the re-entrant angle. The main block is divided transversely by a heavy mid-wall, which is carried up from ground to roof; within each division thus formed there were two chambers on the ground and second floors, but only one on the first floor. The two northern cellars in the basement are the only vaulted portions of the house. The outer has in the gable a series of sixteen recesses about 1 foot square, rather irregularly spaced up to a height of 4 feet above the floor. The inner cellar contains a draw-well. The kitchen was the chamber immediately south of the mid-wall. It has a large fireplace and oven; the latter projects within the room !is well as externally from the south wall. A chamber on the second floor, known as King Charles's Room, has an enriched ceiling of plaster now sadly decayed and mutilated. In a like state is a plaster panel above the fireplace, 3 feet 9 inches broad, by 1 foot 6 inches high, which bears in the centre the crest of Scotland and the initials C.R.2. On the dexter side, above a label on which the inscription is now illegible, are two daggers crossed in saltire, point uppermost, above which is a coronet; on the sinister side is a saltire surmounted by a coronet. Both devices bear initials similar to those on the crest. The panel probably commemorates the Restoration.
The house is in bad condition structurally but is still inhabited.
RCAHMS 1929, visited 8 September 1920.
(1) Reg. Mag. Sig., s.a., No. 850. There were ‘grain-mills and fulling-mills’ here on the Water of Leith. Reg. Mag. Sig., s.a., 1662, No. 308.
