| Architectural Heritage of Taymouth Castle
The old Scottish tower house, Balloch Castle, built about 1550 by Sir Colin Campbell, was remodelled in the 18th and 19th centuries by his descendents the Earls (later Marquises) of Breadalbane. In around.1733, William Adam, the leading Scottish architect of his time, added two flanking pavilions linked to the main block. Of all this only Adam’s west wing remains.
In 1799 the remains of the old castle were demolished to make way for a new building by John Paterson who had been Robert Adam’s clerk of works at the South Bridge college of Edinburgh University, and had gone on to build Eglinton Castle. But from 1806 to 1808 the new main block and cloisters were built by James and Archibald Elliot, the Edinburgh architects who later built Regent Bridge and Waterloo Place in the capital.
The interior of the magnificent staircase tower was wholly designed and executed by the famous plasterwork designer Francis Bernasconi, who went on to do the grand staircase of Buckingham Palace for the Prince Regent. Bernasconi also did the plasterwork of the drawing rooms in 1809-12: these were painted by Cornelius Dixon in 1813.
The East wing was pulled down and a new east wing built in 1818-19, and further extended by 1823, by William Atkinson, known for his work on Chequers, Scone Palace and Abbotsford. He also added stuccoed brickwork and a crenellated parapet to the west wing in 1825.
In preparation for Queen Victoria’s visit in 1842, James Gillespie Graham added the Queen’s Rooms, Library, and its corridor, the cast-iron external staircase and the great dining hall to the west wing, and a further storey, new battlements, ashlar casing were added to Adam wing. Gillespie Graham’s other work included the Moray estate in the Edinburgh New Town and the Roman Catholic Cathedrals in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
The main interior work was by A.W.N. Pugin, who became the leader of the Gothic revival, and is most famous for the Houses of Parliament. The Drawing room and other ceilings were by J.G. Crace from Pugin designs, and are, according to Historic Scotland, the “finest of their period in UK.” Crace had worked almost exclusively for the Prince Regent: he designed some of the interior decoration (c. 1802-4) at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, and in 1815 began a new series of interiors in a spectacular Chinese style there.
Gifford* says that the drawing room is “grand enough but it is the Craces’ painted decoration that makes it sumptuous”. Victoria and Albert’s appreciation of their visit to “the exquisitely finished” Taymouth is recorded in the Queen’s journal and led them to build their own Highland home at Balmoral. Balmoral is, in fact, more homely than Taymouth, where, according to Gifford, the library is given “especial richness” by its roof, “a broad Tudor arch with a pair of longitudinal beams from which hang pendants; joining the pendants .. are arched braces, their spandrels pierced by quatrefoils. The ceiling above this framework is divided into small compartments, each containing moulded cusping and painted in blue and gold, the effect a jewel box of encrustation.”
David Walker is Emiritus Professor at the School of Art History, St Andrews University,and is the foremost authority on Scottish architectural heritage. He comments that Taymouth is not just of national, but of European and transatlantic importance. The only comparable example of Georgian/early Victorian Gothic is the Westminster Houses of Parliament.
Sources
John Gifford* - The Buildings of Scotland: Perth & Kinross (Pesvner Architectural Guides) Yale University Press 2007
Canmore website - The Royal Commission for the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland Historic Scotland website.
Neil & Rosie Hooper
See also:
Time Ticks on Taymouth
Taymouth Tantaliser
Taymouth Estate Proposal: Update
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