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Architecture in detail: ceilings

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23/06/2016

Raise the roof! Ceilings is the fourth gallery in a series to celebrate the Year of Innovation, Architecture and Design in 2016 which showcases architectural details from the collections of Historic Environment Scotland (HES).

One defining feature of ceilings is that they are usually decorative rather than structural, and are intended to hide the masonry or beams supporting the roof of a building. This means that you can see some very ornate ceilings in religious buildings and the homes of the wealthy, but you see trusses and undecorated beams in simpler houses and functional buildings such as barns or factories. In this gallery we have examples of painted ceilings, plaster ceilings, wooden ceilings, metal ceilings, ancient ceilings, modern ceilings, gothic ceilings, rococo ceilings, church ceilings, mansion ceilings, and most importantly, appealing ceilings.

The National Record of the Historic Environment at HES includes a wealth of material illustrating buildings and gardens across Scotland, including a wide variety of ceilings from religious, secular and domestic buildings.The collections include historic prints and drawings as well as survey photographs and information from the past hundred years which create a fascinating architectural record.

The collections can be consulted in our Search Room and through our online resources. This includes Canmore where new images and information are added every day through ongoing surveys of Scotland's built heritage, as well as through an active digitisation programme of negatives, prints and drawings.