House Of Nairne

NO 0750 3275 The House of Nairne at Loak, 9km N of Perth, was ‘one of the finest seats of the Scottish Nobility’. It was the last major design of Sir William Bruce (the King’s architect) and was constructed between c1706 and 1710. The owner, Lord Nairne was a staunch Jacobite and lost the estate after the 1745 rebellion. It was purchased by his cousin James Murray, the 2nd Duke of Atholl, who had no use for another large house. This combined with a possible desire to remove a Jacobite rallying point, led to Murray contracting George Sandeman of Perth to demolish the house and sell everything. This roup was carried out 1759 – 1764 and the

site was returned to farmland.

A visit showed that the location of the house marked on all editions of OS maps and in the RCAHMS records (NO

0738 3284) is undoubtedly wrong. The stone remains at this position, perched at the end of a narrow ridge above the Ordie burn, might be a tower or pavilion in the former gardens or even the site of the earlier 15th-century Nairne House destroyed by fire in 1704. However, there is not enough space for the huge house depicted in the only known representation drawn from memory by James Nairne some time during 1764–1770.

The Blair Atholl House Library was able to provide a copy of a map drawn by James Stobie as part of a farm

lease agreement in 1790 which shows the site of the former house some 200m to the SE of the OS position. This is on a broad plain about 100m wide and 300m long between the river and the ridge to the N, a much more likely situation. In favour of this site we can also note a large soil mark seen on the ‘Getmapping’ aerial photography, some rectangular looking cropmarks (RCAHMS photo E06841 30.07.2001) and a prominent terrace in the field.

A magnetic survey of 0.5ha was carried out over the terrace and surrounding area on 12–14 October 2008. This showed that an E/W metal water pipeline has been laid across the centre of the terrace. There are a few small linear anomalies which lie on the correct orientations to be part of the house complex. A resistivity survey and a resistivity profile carried out over these anomalies demonstrated corresponding resistivity changes but failed to provide convincing evidence for a building. It appears that George Sandeman did his job

too well.

Archive: RCAHMS (intended)

Funder: Perth and Kinross Heritage Trust

P Morris (Blairgowrie Geoscience), 2008