Ground Survey

Date January 2005 - December 2005

Event ID 577825

Category Recording

Type Ground Survey

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/577825

NJ 885 280 Comprehensive landscape survey and analysis was undertaken between January and December 2005 of the surviving core of the Pitmedden Estate, extending to selected areas sold to surrounding farms by the NTS in the 1950s.

The principal discovery was that the well-known formal walled garden of c 1675 at the core of the historic estate did not exist in isolation. The present Pitmedden House incorporates fragments of earlier structures, particularly to the N, and the uppermost garden terrace adjacent to the E side of the present house was probably the site of an earlier mansion that itself likely incorporated predecessor structures. The early complex was found from contemporary

accounts to have been burnt in 1807 (not 1818 as secondary sources have it). A drawing of the ruins in 1838 suggests a U-shaped courtyard open to the W ; this arrangement is now reversed.

On the N side of the house an existing court of offices was recognised to be of early date (late 17th or early 18th century); this includes a stable to the NW and a single-storeyed cottage to the NE, the latter subsequently given an additional storey. Between these two buildings was a flanking wall and gateway. A wall seems likely to have extended S from the SE corner of the cottage to close off the court, meeting the N side of the lost main house. It is possible

that the early cottage had been a gardener's house.

Outwith the main walled garden, the remains of a very extensive network of early drystone enclosure walls, laid out on a rectilinear grid with the walled garden at the centre, were identified and mapped (both by fieldwalking and map-regression exercises). These early walls, which were of exceptionally fine construction, were respected and often cut by all other features in the landscape ; quarries, turnpike roads, etc. On the basis of such evidence, the enclosure network was deduced to date close to the period of construction of the walled garden itself. The early walls form a

network of enclosures very suggestive of the formal laying-out of a small estate as described in contemporary treatises and following contemporary Continental practices.

Notably idiosyncratic details of the two early garden pavilions ; rusticated window surrounds and flat ogee lintels - were found, in common with similar details at the late 17th-century Hatton House terraced garden, to the W of Edinburgh. There can be little doubt that the same hand was involved in their construction.

The monumental E entrance of the walled garden seems not to be original to its present location. These may have been the gates at the W side of the original mansion court and are very similar to those shown in the 1830s drawing. The house was rebuilt in the 1850s and the gate piers relocated. The early estate appears to have evolved with additional plantings and other features in the 18th century and, in particular, the early 19th century. The latter was in large part in response to the layingout of turnpike roads that converged upon and cut through the Pitmedden Estate ; the modern B9000 (in 1805), B999 (in 1825) and the A920 (early 19th century). Many of the existing plantings, shelter-belts and drives appear to date from this time, as do most of the secondary estate buildings, farms and outlying field walls.

Sponsor: NTS.

T Addyman 2005.