Edinburgh, Royal Botanic Garden, Glasshouses
Glasshouse(S) (20th Century)
Site Name Edinburgh, Royal Botanic Garden, Glasshouses
Classification Glasshouse(S) (20th Century)
Alternative Name(s) Greenhouses; Plant Houses; Hothouses; Arboretum Road; Inverleith Row
Canmore ID 128309
Site Number NT27NW 36.02
NGR NT 24696 75491
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/128309
- Council Edinburgh, City Of
- Parish Edinburgh (Edinburgh, City Of)
- Former Region Lothian
- Former District City Of Edinburgh
- Former County Midlothian
Plant houses erected c.1965-67. Built to replace the earlier glasshouses by Mackenzie and Moncur.
RCAHMS (CAJS) 2012.
Plant houses demolished c.1964, new Plant Houses erected c.1965-67.
For list of related sites, see NT27NW 36.00 Edinburgh, Royal Botanic Garden, General.
REFERENCE:
PSA R/14/1-14 are photographs showing hothouses due for demolition (1962)
PSA R/19/1-14 are photographs showing hothuses due for demolition (1964)
PSA R/95/1-9 are photographs of plans for the new plant houses (1964)
REFERENCE:
Colin McWilliam Collection
Acc. No. 1991/53
MS 751/2
Text for Scotsman article entitled 'New-type glasshouse for Royal Botanic Gardens.'
Scotsman article entitled 'Arcaded box floats over Botanic Garden.' (4.7.1966)
Publication Account (1997)
Two glasshouses - a large exhibition plant house (420 ft. in length) and a smaller exhibition orchid house set at right angles - of a startingly innovative suspended portal-frame system of construction, allowing, in a somewhat megastructural fashion, a sharp segregation between fixed frame and free-flowing contents. Built on the initiative of the then RBG Curator, Dr E E Kemp, who in 1961 noticed corrosion in the old exhibition house and argued successfully for he building of new, Modern structures. A full scale section of the new buildings were erected and tested to destruction in 1964. All structural support derives from an intricate external structure of high-tensile steel tubes and cables, from which the glazing is suspended. As a result of the absence of internal framework - stipulated by Dr Kemp - serried potted-plants are done away with, and the entire space can be given over to exoic landscape 'environments': African and American desertscapes, East Indian tropics, and Australiasian temperate areas are only a few steps apart. (Fig. 4.24).
Information from 'Rebuilding Scotland: The Postwar Vision, 1945-75', (1997).
Photographic Survey (6 March 2007)
Photographed by the Threatened Buildings Survey as part of the wider survey of the gardens prior to the demolition of the West entrance and building of the John Hope Gateway.
RCAHMS (CAJS) 2012.
