Conservation

Event ID 576933

Category Building History

Type Conservation

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/576933

NS 5414 2039 Dumfries House is an exceptionally fine mansion built in 1754–60 for William Crichton-Dalrymple,

5th Earl of Dumfries, and designed by the architects John, Robert and James Adam.

The architect Robert Weir Schultz contributed substantial original works in the late 1890s for the 3rd Marquess of Bute, John Patrick Crichton-Stuart. The collection is exceptional and includes furniture bought specifically for the house from Thomas Chippendale during his ‘Director’ period, and items from the contemporary Edinburgh furniture makers William Mathie, Alexander Peter and Francis Brodie. This Scottish

group has no comparison anywhere in the world. The house is set in an extensive and complex designed landscape which includes several listed buildings, and other features and structures.

The new owners The Great Steward of Scotland’s Dumfries House Trust commissioned a conservation plan. The plan will help to direct future conservation, repair and management for the site, which opened to the public for the first time in the summer of 2008.

Extensive documentary and physical research was carried out from November 2007–December 2008. Surviving 18th century estate plans were used to identify and explain features in the landscape. A detailed inventory of the house was completed. A detailed gazetteer of the buildings, features, structures, landscape areas, woodland, burns and roads in the landscape was also compiled. Discoveries included the history of the building of a Temple gateway among a full set of estate buildings identified as being designed by John Adam, including unlisted structures. Surviving 18th-century landscape features include ‘clumps’, round plantations

on hilltops, which were visually interconnected with others often several miles distant. The remains of a WW2

army camp were identified. Features dating from before 1750 included the sites of two demolished 17th-century tower houses (Waterside and Leifnorris), a sycamore tree associated with Waterside which is it least 350 years old, a ha-ha which may be associated with Leifnorris or with the 14th-century Terringzean Castle, and the site and remains of an early 18th-century well canopy. Documentary research showed that Weir Schultz had designed a short-lived formal garden named ‘New Chiswick’, based on Lord Burlington’s

garden at Chiswick. Considerable numbers of 18th-century trees survive and could be used as guides in restoring the 18th-century landscape design.

Archive: The Great Steward of Scotland’s Dumfries House Trust

Funder: The Great Steward of Scotland's Dumfries House Trust

Jen Austin, Cath McFarlane, John Sanders, Tom Addyman, James Simpson, William Kay, Christopher Dingwall, Tanja Romankiewicz, Wilma Bouwmeester, Sophie Younger and David Jones (Simpson and Brown Architects), 2008