Inveraray Castle Estate, Malt Land, Saw Mill, Great Shade

This 18th-century rectangular court of office- and farmbuilding sstands on the W bank of the River Aray, at the S end of the Maltland meadow (en.1*). 1 km NW of Inveraray Castle (No. 184). An earlier court known as the 'White Barns', grouped round three sides of a square, stood a little to the SE, and part of its central range is preserved in the E wall of the adjacent walled garden of 1752-5.

The development of the Maitland offices began with a coach-house, designed by John Adam to abut the garden wall in 1760-1 and completed with an adjacent lean-to range of stables and cottages in the early 1770s, probably under the supervision of William Mylne. At the same period a detached hay-barn was built 44m to the N. The project for a courtyard 98m in length had presumably been conceived by 1774, when Robert Mylne began to design the 'Great Shade' or workshop forming its W side, and two years later he produced a drawing for 'making the buildings behind the garden into a compleat farm yard'. A series of undated drawings for the completion of the court shows some variations in detail, but by 1782 the hay-barn had been doubled in width to the N, and the courtyard enclosed by range of single-storeyed drying-sheds flanking the hay-barn and returning to abut at the W the 'Great Shade' and at the E a Riding School of similar dimensions, designed by Mylne in 1780 (en.2). This last building, which was also employed as a hay-barn, was much used for amateur theatricals before being gutted by fire in 1817; it was restored in 1897 as the 'Jubilee Hall’ (en.3*). The NE range of drying-sheds had been removed before 1870, and the hay-barn, having already been considerably altered, was partially dismantled about 1960.

RCAHMS 1992, visited October 1986

[see RCAHMS 1992 No. 197 for a full architectural description]