Mavisbank House, Ice-house

NT 28807 65146 (Mavisbank House) A re-assessment was undertaken of the designed landscape and analytical history of Mavisbank House. Compilation of a gazetteer of landscape features and built structures represents a comprehensive upgrading of previous assessments.

A previously unrecorded ice house was discovered below the existing game larder; well preserved and linked to the game larder. A possible 'tump' or stand of trees forming a visual terminus to the northern vista was also identified.

Assessment was undertaken of the doocot forming the 'eye-catcher' at the E end of the main vista. Low walls on either side had been reduced in height; patchings on either side of the doocot tower suggested that these walls had been shaped in order to form a silhouette on the skyline as seen from the house.

Initial assessment of the walled garden confirmed that this had originally been oval, but designed so that it appeared circular when viewed from the house. It was deduced that there had been a further vista aligned on the centre of the S frontage of the house that bisected the walled garden.

The SW annexe to the walled garden, now triangular in form, had most probably been rectangular originally, as suggested by Roy's map of c 1750. The surviving gazebo was deduced to have been on the central axis of this former arrangement, an axis that may also have been aligned on the doocot at the E end of the policies.

Archive to be deposited in the NMRS.

T Addyman 2004