Edinburgh, Groathill Road North, Drylaw House, Stables

No. 173 Drylaw House [Stable Courtyard]

The stable courtyard lies about 25 yds. N.E. of the house. The buildings that enclose it have obviously been constructed out of re-used material, the debris in all probability of the mansion of the first Loch of Drylaw which may have stood on this site or nearby. The size and arrangement of that house is unknown; but it seems unlikely that any substantial part of it remained to be included in the existing buildings, as no trace can be seen in them of the customary arrangement of a laird's house of the time. The buildings are of harled rubble with free-stone dressings throughout; the roofs are modern and have tabled skews. The N. building is used as a hen-house and boiler-house. At ground level there are four external doorways, three facing E. and one W. On the S. is a window, on the E. jamb of which an idle hand has carved the date 1741 and has thereby given us a lower limiting date for the construction of the building. On the W. is a window lighting the extension and contemporary with it, but a second window on its W. side is clearly an afterthought. The ground floor is divided into three compartments. Above the two in the earlier part of the building is a loft, lit from the W. and entered from the E. by means of a ladder. Only at the N.E. corner is there a chimney, and this seems to be comparatively modern.

The oblong building on the S. side of the courtyard is two-storeyed, the upper floor being entered from the higher ground on the S. by a forestair. At its E. end is a roofless lean-to; from its W. end a square cell, also roofless, projects N. in alinement with the W. gable. The lean-to roof has been altered in pitch; beneath the original tabling on the S. wall can be seen two small grotesque heads carved in relief. A third grotesque head can be seen carved on a large skew-put at the N.W. corner of the cell. As this side of the courtyard now stands, its ground floor includes an ash-pit in the cell, a store for wood at the W. end of the main block, a stable in the remainder and a loose-box in the lean-to, while the upper floor above stable and store is simply a long loft. That this was the original arrangement is doubtful. The wood-store has a large fireplace, apparently contracted, in its gable and there is a fireplace at either end of the loft. Fireplaces suggest habitable rooms, and in this case rooms of some importance since the eastern of the upper fireplaces has a good bolection-moulding while the one to the W., of late 17th- or early 18th century type, has in addition a frieze, on which swags carved in relief are separated by a central keystone, as well as a moulded cornice. But the fenestration throughout is not that of a laird's house but of an outbuilding, part of which may have been inhabited by employees. And the fireplaces are probably in secondary use, just as is the bolection-moulded lintel of a fireplace which has been used to support the outlet from a privy at the N. end of the E. range. The E. range is rather wider than the loose-box from which it extends N. It has only a single storey and is divided into two compartments, in the northern and smaller of which is an early 18th-century fireplace in primary use - a useful clue to the age of the building itself. The larger compartment is a byre. In its E. or backwall is a giblet-checked window-lintel and a built-up doorway, also giblet-checked, both of which date from the 17th century and are in secondary use. At its S.W. corner is a second built-up doorway, surmounted on its outer side by a cavity such as is often reserved for an armorial panel. The whole corner looks like the fragment of an entrance. On the W. of the courtyard is a square, featureless building which has been converted into a garage.

Where old material has been so extensively reused as in these buildings analysis becomes difficult, if not impossible, without the stripping of walls and the excavation of foundations. The probability is, however, that George Loch lived in his grandfather’s house until his own was completed, whereupon the older building was pulled down, either wholly or at least in great part, in order to provide material for the offices of its successor. The inventory of 1759 records the following outbuildings: the brew-house with a laundry in its loft; the bakehouse; the easter and wester stables; the hagg house where, probably, wood was cut up; the barn; the coach-house; the cart-house; and the corn yard.

There are three wells-the first near the kitchen door of the house, the second in the stable courtyard, and the third immediately outside and to the N. of this. About 300 yds. N.E. of the house stands a roofless, oblong dovecot of 18th-century date; this has two doorways side by side and facing S., and the nests were of wood [NT27NW 26.04]. On its S.W. corner is a two-faced tabular sundial. Another sundial, also of the early 18th century, stands on the N. wall of the garden [NT27NW 26.05].

RCAHMS 1951, visited c.1941

Photographic survey of Drylaw House and stables, Edinburgh, by the Ministry of Works/Scottish National Buildings Record in January 1966.