Standing Building Recording

Date February 2007 - December 2007

Event ID 556333

Category Recording

Type Standing Building Recording

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/556333

NS 10843 59499 (Mount Stuart House), NS 11012 60563 (Shore Chapel) A conservation plan was commissioned by the Mount Stuart Trust for managing the house and its immediate policies. Work on this plan was undertaken between February and December 2007.

Mount Stuart House is a late 19th-century mansion with private chapel built for the 3rd Marquess of Bute by Robert Rowand Anderson. It largely replaces the early 18th-century mansion by Alexander McGill that burnt down in 1877. The wings of the Georgian structure survived the fire and were incorporated in the new 19th-century main building. Research and analysis showed that much of the designed landscape of the 18th century and estate buildings have been retained. New research and contextual analysis was undertaken for the 18th-century Shore Chapel, a short distance from Mount Stuart House, also presumed to be by Alexander McGill. Anonymous design drawings helped to understand the original design of this building as an endowed protestant church and it has always been an important landscape feature. The 1880s saw its transformation, presumably by Rowand Anderson, into a Catholic chapel; in 1900 the mausoleum for the 3rd Marquess was erected to the design of Robert Weir Schultz within the N aisle; otherwise the earlier interior was little altered.

Works included survey, gazetteer, condition assessment and archaeological analysis of the main house, Shore Chapel, and key structures within the designed landscape in order to develop a strategy for the long-term management of the site. This study, combined with extensive review of historical information from the Mount Stuart Archives, which culminated in the production of a conservation plan, completed at the end of 2007.

Archive deposited with Mount Stuart Archives.

Funder: The Mount Stuart Trust.