1In 1539, King James V must have enjoyed how closely the courtyard front of his new Falkland Palace chapel followed the superlative and contemporary Loire-school architecture promoted by Francois 1er, and which James knew from his French visit of 1536-1537. Falkland’s bay divisions, for example, clearly reflect the thinking that applied at both St Eustache, in Paris, and the little suburban palace of Villers-Cotterêts, each under construction by c.1532. It was the ideas from the French court which proved attractive to James, and these were adapted for the architecture at Falkland—not replicated. The obvious messages were that Scotland and France were aligned culturally, religiously, politically, and militarily—and that Scotland stood in the forefront of European cultural innovation.
2James was also rather repudiating the national architectural tradition and what had gone before—the intention of course of any new fashion—by substituting national vernaculars with the cultures of Classical antiquity, revived and re-fashioned for the present. But before, during, and most certainly after the fixation on Classicism, distinctive alternative fashions were revived, the object being to pluck choice aspects of the “lost” glorious past for re-creation and celebration.
- 1 See helpful discussion of nationalism in Owen Dudley Edwards, Our Nations & Nationalisms, Edinburgh (...)
3Such revivalism is best known from the 18-19th centuries’ Age of Romanticism, of heightened nationalisms and neo-Medievalizing. Cultural and national revivalisms drew from times of past strength and greatness; a purpose being to generate national pride by viewing evidence of that greatness through providing it a new life in the present. Revivalism is inevitably therefore culturally patriotic or politically nationalist.1
- 2 Mark Crinson, Empire Building: Orientalism and Victorian Architecture, London: Routledge, 1996, 113 (...)
4Primarily, revivalism celebrates a community’s heritage. It can also signal an imaginary common heritage; or demonstrate colonialism, when alien heritages are implanted where the imperial force is announcing its “superiority” and its intention to stay. Colonial India has innumerable exemplifications of this, such as the English Gothic revival Afghan Memorial Church in Mumbai of 1844 by J. M. Derick.2
5The sense of political or cultural value existing in old buildings also motivated an urge to restore ruins, to provide these likewise with a new life. Revivalism is therefore helpful to the politically motivated, to governments and other patrons. In Scotland, revivalism had a complexity of motivations, authenticities, and outcomes, driven frequently by attitudes towards neighbouring England. Being part of a four-nation unitary state which has propagandised “top down” on the equivalence of state as nation, revivalisms were frequently applied to meet a British or UK political nationalism, while that confusion of state/nation provided for differing paradigms.
6The basic architectural revivalism process might broadly have been as follows: Firstly, the politically-motivated visionary person identified that something was missing from the culture and explained the need for its return or its introduction—a task of the nationalist being to restore, or in a more colonial context to display, maybe of necessity fabricate, national heritage. Scholars, historians and politicians provided the necessary evidence or reasoning to make the idea practicable; the political power provided the means. And lastly, the artist, architect or sculptor translated the ideas into physical form for public consumption. Options included either displaying old ideas in the new, or alternatively, manufacturing physical replicates, and here we highlight both. Examples are discussed under 3 broad headings: cultural identity, Scottish national identity, and conflicted or dual identities.
7Before a political Scotland existed, Iona, at the edge of Christendom’s then-known world, and within the Gaelic kingdom of Dalriada, developed as a major international Christian centre. Around 700, its religious landscape was re-shaped to replicate the Heavenly Jerusalem:
- 3 Ewan Campbell and Adrián Maldonado, “A New Jerusalem ‘At The Ends Of The Earth’: Interpreting Charl (...)
the unique paved roadway and the schematic layout of the early church, shrine chapel and free-standing crosses were intended to evoke Jerusalem, […] the journey to the sacred heart of the site mirrored a pilgrim’s journey to the tomb of Christ.3
8For that programme, the relics of the 6th-century founding saint, Columba (who immigrated from Gaelic Ireland to Gaelic Scotland in 563), were seemingly translated to what had become the symbolically accordant location. Adomnán (d. 704), ninth abbot of Iona, whose enthusiasm for architecture and its symbolic potential seems incontrovertible, maybe led the process. He provided:
- 4 Kathryn Blair Moore, “Adomnán’s On the Holy Places: Pilgrimage Manuscripts and Architectural Transl (...)
the most significant set of ground-plans to survive from medieval Europe…in Adomnán’s De Locis Sanctis (On The Holy Places), c. 679–704.4
- 5 Thomas O’Loughlin, “Adomnán and Mira Rotunditas”, Ériu, 47, 1996, 95-99, 95.
- 6 The Crown of Thorns also evokes a circle.
- 7 The drawings emphasise the footprints on the Mount of Olives, scene of the Ascension, “widely under (...)
9Adomnán was notably interested in roundness (the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; the circle of the (known) earth; Mount Tabor). He applied the term “mira rotundidate” [= marvellous round shape] three times in De Locis Sanctis,5 while of course the distinguishing profile of the so-called Celtic cross is its embracing a circle (fig. 1),6 and high crosses were vital to the formula devised for Iona.7 An erected cross could signify the rhetorically “exact” site of Jesus’s execution.
Plate 1. Kildalton Cross, c.800.
Author’s collection.
10The symbolism applied at Iona was a mirror too of Christianity’s hoped-for New Jerusalem; and through this physical re-creation of the Holy City, the pilgrim, in that age of pilgrimage, could shortcut their journey to the sacred soil. Because here it now was in a Gaelic heartland, in sacred Iona: about as far from the Holy Land as geography permitted, the farthest bound of Christendom, as if it were the matching bookend to Jerusalem; and maybe on that basis the only place in the British archipelago important enough to be chosen to embody so supreme an image. Foster and Jones highlighted that:
- 8 Sally Foster with Siân Jones: design and original artwork by Christina Unwin, My Life as a Replica (...)
Iona’s intellectual, spiritual, political and artistic impact on the western Christian world in the long eighth-century cannot be under-estimated.8
11And after all,
- 9 Campbell et al, “A new Jerusalem”, 36; Ian Fisher, Early Medieval Sculpture in the West Highlands a (...)
Iona has the largest collection of early medieval sculptured stone monuments in Britain and, in the free-standing high crosses of St John and St Martin, some of the outstanding European sculpture of the period. It has been proposed that Iona was the origin of the ringed cross, perhaps the most iconic of ‘Celtic’ artefacts.9
- 10 Ben Cruachan is a symbolic mountain in Argyllshire/ former Dalriada.
12The Norse impact and dominating presence in the west, which for Iona began with the raid of 795, was reversed by both the Battle of Largs in 1263 (see below) and the Treaty of Perth in 1266. In the interim, Iona’s religious community relocated to both Dunkeld, and Kells, in Ireland, but thereafter re-established itself to an extent. Gaeldom’s cultural self-confidence, born of achievement and evidenced clearly by Iona, would continue, as is clear from a poem of c.1220 by Muireadhach Albannach (= Scottish Murchadh/ Murdo), composed during the 5th crusade, where he is found in the Adriatic region, at Monte Gargano. The poem’s title comes from its opening line, “Fada in Chabhair a Cruacain” (= “Help from Cruachan is far away”),10 and includes:
- 11 Gerard Murphy, “Two Irish poems written from the Mediterranean in the thirteenth century”, Éigse, (...)
Between Monte Gargano and the fair-ditched lands of Cruachan
The distance is not small. …
It would be the reward of heaven tonight
To touch Scotland of the lofty manors.11
13Here was a cosmopolitan man of culture who both thought about architecture and considered, from the Adriatic, that his homeland was characterised by “lofty’ manors”– which for him would be Argyll’s series of modernising stone-built castles. No hint is provided of a need to copy at home the great fortresses and sites he had just encountered. Instead, the poem indicates the soldier-poet’s confidence in his own culture. This was a confidence that continued, into an age of revivalism.
14By the time of the 5th crusade, the western isles region was already a significant military and naval power and warrior resource. In the 14th-15th centuries, under the leadership of Clan Donald, the region and its dynasty became more powerful as the Lordship of the Isles. Its leaders had already enjoyed a quasi-royal status, as indicated by their having long been denoted Rí Innse Gall (= “King” of the Isles); and from at least 1336, they were also now styled Dominus Insularum (= Lord of the Isles); men who engaged on a diplomatic level with Scottish and English kings. The heightened status came ultimately from the decision to change sides in the first War of Independence and support King Robert Bruce, the islesmen having been assigned a privileged position at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314.
- 12 Jean Munro and R. W. Munro (eds.), Acts of the Lords of the Isles 1336-1493, Edinburgh: Scottish Hi (...)
- 13 Ibid., xix.
15Around 1350, John, the first lord (“the good John of Islay”, in power c.1330-86) married Margaret, King Robert Bruce’s granddaughter and daughter of the future King Robert II, who was de facto the country’s ruler during David II’s captivity in England between 1346 and 1357. The marriage showed both his and the Lordship’s socio-political importance, as did his presenting himself for the wedding at “the mouth of the river of Glasgow [= the Clyde] with threescore longships”.12 Most historians agree that “there was no parallel… [to the Lordship]…in Scotland”.13 This was the only Lordship which could defeat a royal army. As happened at Inverlochy in 1431.
- 14 David Caldwell, Islay: The Lands of the Lordship, Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2017, 54.
- 15 Ibid. K. A. Steer and J. W. M. Bannerman, Late Medieval Monumental Sculpture in the West Highlands (...)
- 16 Caldwell, Islay, 55. The corpus is well catalogued in Steer and Bannerman, Monumental Sculpture, 19 (...)
- 17 A fragmentary ringed/ circled cross of this revivalist period survives at Kilmartin (ibid., plate 3 (...)
16The Lordship was centred not in a castle, such as kings and other lords had; but instead on an unfortified island, in much the same way that the Columban-period church utilised islands for church-sites. This was Finlaggan, within the Island of Islay. From there, John’s patronage included “building work, and the flourishing of a distinctive West Highland culture”, and promoting the church.14 He, it seems, founded Oronsay Priory (1325x1353),15 reviving the Columban tradition of utilising islands as religious sites, while the tradition of decorative stone sculpture, perhaps introduced to Gaeldom under Adomnán at Iona, also revived under John’s patronage, rule, and influence.16 Iona was revived as the pre-eminent sculptural workshop and centre, while its abbey was also substantially rebuilt in the 15th century, re-affirming or reviving its “heritage” value and perhaps renovating in the process Iona’s meaning as a symbolic Jerusalem. Most obviously, the free-standing monolithic wheeled cross made a comeback, as a disc-headed variant; retaining, that is, the circle (which served now as the placement for depicting Christ), with exemplars at Oronsay, Kilchoman, and elsewhere (fig. 2).17
Plate 2. Kilchoman Cross, c.1400.
Author’s collection.
- 18 The place of execution and of displaying authority, Cnoc Crochaire [= hill of hanging], Caolila, wa (...)
17These “new” crosses and sculptures intentionally emphasised Early Christian, sometimes Columban-period, religious sites and landscapes (Kilchoman) as well as new ones (Oronsay). It all came from a period of cultural excellence, of political and military confidence, of de facto near-independent authority,18 of planned territorial expansionism, and a celebration of the Lordship’s heritage. Revivalism recalled a time of Gaeldom’s cultural strength, confidence, respect and influence, revived for that new cultural “high” period. It ended following the Lordship’s forfeiture by James IV in 1493.
18Besides the cultural revivalism within 14th-15th century Gaeldom, an early manifestation of national revivalism in Scotland emerged in the decades around 1400; during, that is, northern Europe’s late Gothic period, a time of pointed arches and clustered columns. The period 1400-1700 was a time when throughout Europe,
- 19 Karl Enenkel and Konrad Ottenheym, “Introduction: The Quest for an Appropriate Past: The Creation (...)
political ambitions and territorial claims were regularly underpinned by historical arguments, true or otherwise. Literature, architecture, and paintings were used to present these arguments, and to make them acceptable and plausible.19
- 20 Ian Campbell, “A Romanesque Revival and the Early Renaissance in Scotland c.1380-1513”, Architectur (...)
- 21 Richard D. Oram, David I: King of Scots 1124-1153, Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2020, chapter 14 (quote at (...)
- 22 Joe Donnelly, “An Open Economy: The Berwick Shipping Trade, 1311-1373”, Scottish Historical Review, (...)
- 23 Alice Taylor, “The Assizes of David I, King of Scots, 1124-53”, Scottish Historical Review, vol. 9, (...)
19Scotland’s architectural contribution was a Romanesque revival characterised by round columns and round-arched openings (e.g. Dunkeld),20 all referencing the pre-Gothic period, and maybe specifically David I’s time (r. 1124-53). His reputation, then, possibly trumped that of his also accomplished father, Malcolm III (r. 1058-93). David was a strategic thinker, generator of wealth, provider of religious buildings, creator of burghs; the warrior king who brought most of Scotland and much of today’s northern England under his control; while reputationally too “more monk than king”.21 His was a period of improvement, of wealth and fiscal development, prior to the calamitous Wars of Independence from England which inaugurated in 1296, and the economic undermining over subsequent centuries.22 Even Robert Bruce had associated himself in the 1310s-1320s with David I to stress his descent and, more critically in the circumstances, his claimed legitimacy.23
20This Romanesque revivalism seems therefore to have intentionally highlighted national antiquity and a past “Golden age” of success and strength; a reassertion of martial virtue when English assaults had again been repulsed, with military assistance now provided to France. The contrast with England’s wholehearted adoption of Gothic is clear.
- 24 Ian Campbell and Aonghus MacKechnie, “‘The “great Temple of Solomon at Stirling Castle”, Architectu (...)
- 25 1 Kings 7:21. Pillars might have existed originally.
- 26 According to Rev John Sime (http://canmore.org.uk/collection/1076111), the internal measurements ar (...)
21The only known replicate from Scotland’s Early Modern period was the version of Solomon’s Temple built at Stirling for the baptism of Prince Henry in 1594.24 However, the venue for every Masonic meeting was taken to represent the Temple, and the symbolism was sometimes carried into structures elsewhere. For instance, the twin pillars of Boaz and Jachin which stood outside the Temple’s entrance are not known from Stirling,25 but they exist at Balcarres Chapel of 1635 together with the symbolic number of three steps, the overall plan having masonic proportions, and a rank of three biforate windows.26 Solomonic pillars are seen again at Hans Hamilton and Janet Denhom’s tomb of 1641 at Dunlop. As at Iona, the model source is Biblical; the signalling nationalist, since modern freemasonry was created by William Schaw in 1590s Scotland.
22Scotland’s Reformation took place in 1560, one consequence being political re-alignment away from Catholic France to Protestant England. Presbyterian ascendency perhaps seemed secure in the earlier 1590s, when the builders of centralised-plan Burntisland church anticipated a Presbyterian future. But James’s drive for Episcopacy soon seemed triumphant, particularly after 1603 when he had become king of the entire archipelago. The 1610 General Assembly confirmed that the church would be Episcopal, and Scotland’s bishops, including archbishop of Glasgow John Spottiswoode, were consecrated in London.
- 27 Julian Goodare, “How Archbishop Spottiswoode Became an Episcopalian”, Renaissance and Reformation/ (...)
23Spottiswoode renounced Presbyterianism in 1598, becoming James’s chief advocate for Episcopacy.27 As Archbishop of St Andrews, he navigated Episcopal innovations through the 1617 Perth Assembly, the so-called ‘Five Articles’ being ratified by parliament in 1621.
24Also in 1621, Spottiswoode built a model Episcopal church beside his own Dairsie Castle, near the Scottish Reformation’s intellectual “capital” of St Andrews. Episcopacy was presented as Scotland’s ancient church continuing, “cleansed” simply of papacy, and in 1655 Spottiswoode’s role was noted in
restoring the ancient Discipline, and bringing…[Scotland’s] Church to some degrees of Uniformity with her Sister Church of England.
25In addition,
- 28 John Spotswood [sic], The History of the Church of Scotland, Beginning in the Year of Our Lord 203 (...)
he publickly upon his own charges built, and adorn’d the Church of Darsey after the decent English form.28
26Dairsie’s hybrid architecture accords with that description, and almost suggests a conflicted nationality. Its originally flat roof and squared-off profile (and therefore no traditional crowsteps) connect it to the Anglicising palace designs at notably Edinburgh (1615-1617), whose front profile emulated that of the Tower of London. Dairsie’s corbelled turret though, in contrast, speaks of an orthodox and earlier provincial Scots renaissance, and not the modernity of the contemporary court architecture. Its primitivizing tracery with flat-faced “plates” signalled antiquity; while its processional form, with a big west door and full-size east windows, followed both the pre-Reformation and English formulae. The carefully thought-out combination of “ancient” and contemporary Scottish models, plus English forms, signalled that Dairsie was simultaneously “ancient”, modern, and “British” (fig. 3).
Plate 3. Dairsie Church, 1621.
Author’s collection.
27An inscription quoted Psalm 26:8: “Iehovah, I have loved the beauty of your house”; contradicting through scripture, perhaps taunting, Presbyterians’ rejection of Biblically-unsanctioned ornament which they had expelled from their churches. As with the Counter-Reformation, beauty was to be part of the Episcopal church’s proselytising armoury (Covenantor iconoclasts destroyed much of Dairsie’s “beauty”.)
- 29 David Stevenson, ‘Lindsay, David (c.1575–1639/40) in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxfo (...)
28A heavyweight Gothic tracery, also flat-faced, was applied elsewhere in that period of Stuart Episcopacy, notably at South Queensferry’s new church of 1633. It was consecrated by David Lindsay, Bishop of Edinburgh,29 who crowned Charles I in Holyrood that same year but who is better known as the prime target of anti-Episcopal rioters in St Giles in 1637 where, tradition states, Jenny Geddes hurled her stool at him—the first violent anti-Episcopal action in what became Civil War and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms which ended in 1660.
- 30 Marguerite Wood, PhD (ed.), Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh 1604 to 1626, Edinb (...)
- 31 John Gifford et al., The Buildings of Scotland: Edinburgh, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984, 152.
29Elsewhere, in 1611, Edinburgh’s Town Council debated whether the intended new Greyfriars church should have “pilleris” (presumably a nave-and-aisles form, as built), the decision reached by “pluralitie of votes”.30 Whatever options were considered is unclear, but the real debate may have been whether it would suit Episcopal worship. Edinburgh was self-conscious over its status as “heid burgh”, and its decision, therefore, disproportionately significant.31
30As built, Greyfriars had a western steeple as on pre-Reformation churches, implying a processional (Episcopal) lay-out. Accordant with that, the north avenue shown on James Gordon of Rothiemay’s 1647 “bird’s eye view” indicates that to serve those approaching from the Grassmarket area there was a door on the north wall; placed—the physical evidence suggests—towards its west end.32 But another door was necessary to serve the kirkyard east gate, and there, the answer was to provide one directly opposite that gate; off-centre, consequently, on the gable: not as a twin on the north wall, as would become the Presbyterian standard where the pulpit was placed central. This east door’s location could only allow for an altar being placed central were it set forward from the gable; ie, requiring a screen inside: an improbable arrangement. And yet, the elevated positioning of the great east window’s sill might have allowed for a reredos. The evidence seems inconclusive.
- 33 Photographs taken between the 1845 fire and the restoration begun 1856 are online at http://canmore (...)
31The original tracery is long-gone.33 Possibly that, extant, on the west gable (viz., New Greyfriars, the 1718-1721 part by Alexander McGill and (probably) Master James Smith), flat-faced and heavy-looking as at South Queensferry a near-century earlier, was designed to match the original tracery. So, while currently-known evidence allows no certainty, it is possible that Greyfriars church, famous as the prime venue for the signing of the National Covenant of 1638 which asserted the Presbyterian form of worship, was designed specifically for Episcopal worship. And were that so, the design was most probably intentionally revivalist, given its “retro” character. Episcopalians were in this period more likely to reference pre-Reformation forms than were their iconoclastic Presbyterian fellow-Scots.
32Dairsie was, therefore, not the only church designed to meet the early 17th-century royal drive for episcopacy. And Episcopacy’s claim to antiquity meant therefore reviving or symbolising the old formulae. But change came, and even before the rejection of Charles I’s Scottish policies from 1637-8, the Netherlandish-style Tron Kirk of 1636 provided a new and more Presbyterian model with a centralised (‘anti-processional’) plan, as did Lady Yester’s Kirk of 1644. West Calder church of 1643 also rejected the processional form, with a loft placed at the east end, and (originally) a door towards the left of each long-wall. Along with Charles’s authority, the historicising, revivalist model was rejected in favour of new ideas.
33A new phase of crown-driven Episcopacy inaugurated in 1660, and the exemplar church of the period was Lauder of 1673 by Sir William Bruce. Lauder combined a Classicising plan and profile with Gothic revival windows. The royal agenda, as before, was pursuit of conformity with England.
34After the Catholic King James VII & II inherited in 1685, he wanted to revive Catholicism, and a new church was built at his behest 1688-1691 in the Canongate. Its formula was that of the Counter-Reformation, with a nave-and-aisles street front plus a revivalist cruciform plan and apse. It was designed by the Catholic architect James Smith who had studied in Rome, and it could signal a more widely European Scotland rather than an Episcopal satellite. Finally, in 1690, before the Canongate Kirk was completed, Presbyterianism was confirmed for the national church.
35Here though we continue with Episcopacy and its mutating narrative, as it transferred its royal devotion and its patriotism from the Stuart direct line to the monarchies that replaced them, adopting the new British patriotism delivered to them by Presbyterian unionists.
- 34 In this instance, a Convention, parliament in a reduced form.
36In 1688, English protestants contrived an “invasion” of England and King James left for France. In Scotland, the Estates (parliament)34 took charge, declared James forfeit, and, copying England, offered the throne to the Protestant William of Orange and his wife, Mary, who was James’s daughter. The purpose was to ensure that the national church would be Protestant, and Presbyterian, and that arrangement was confirmed in the Treaty of Union with England in 1707. Supporters of the old royal line (denoted “Jacobites”, from “Jacobus” = James), for patriotic and religious reasons, repeatedly challenged the new order militarily from 1689 until defeated in its final Rising of 1745-1746. Episcopacy was associated from 1689 with the “menaces” of both Jacobitism and Catholicism.
37In 1712, Episcopalians divided into “qualified” congregations, supporters of the new monarchy and English union; and “non-jurors”, supporters maybe of neither. Penal laws were passed against Episcopalians after 1746, and Fort George was built by the government to crush lingering Jacobitism. Its chapel, of 1763, had an apse. While government soldiers might be tasked with overawing Scottish Episcopalians in the north, their own chapel was for, or adaptable for, Episcopal processional worship, to accommodate an anticipated English presence.
38English immigrants and visitors attended the cities’ Episcopal chapels, as, over the century, did increasingly Anglicised Scottish elites. Glasgow’s St Andrew’s-by-the-Green of 1750 was edge-of-town, beside Glasgow Green where the Jacobite army had marshalled in 1745; Edinburgh’s Cowgate Chapel by John Baxter, 1772-4, was slightly hidden in a backland.
- 35 John Parker Lawson, History of the Scottish Episcopal Church from the revolution to the present tim (...)
39In 1788, the leader of the 1745-1746 Rising, Prince Charles Edward Stuart (“Bonnie Prince Charlie”) died. Militarised Jacobitism was finished, penal laws were lifted, and the Episcopal church united to become a model of the establishment. St Peter’s, Edinburgh, of 1790, was given a street frontage but presented itself discreetly as a tenement (it was heightened afterwards);35 James Adam’s St George’s Chapel of 1792-1794 was given a New Town street front in York Place and was unmistakably a church. Its name was that of both the king and of England’s patron saint, signalling anti-Jacobitism and the same Britishness and loyalty displayed by the New Town’s Hanoverian street names.
4018th-century Presbyterian church-builders had favoured Classicism, which illustrated both fashion and the intellectualism required in their teachings. But now, after c.1800 until the 1840s, throughout the country, English models or detailing predominated as new churches, Episcopal, Catholic, and Church of Scotland, were given English perpendicular Gothic tracery and Tudor arches. The seemingly intractable 17th-century Presbyterian-Episcopalian divide that had generated civil war in the 1640s and uprisings in 1666 and 1679 hardly now seemed important.
41The Episcopal church, increasingly confident by the 1810s, now provided for itself two ostentatious neo-Gothic churches. The two were prominently located at diagonally-opposite corners of Edinburgh’s New Town, and each opened in 1818: St Paul’s, York Place, by Archibald Elliot and St John’s, Princes Street, by William Burn.
42Each was richly funded by the Forbes banking family, and each was explicitly English revivalist, richly-ornamented in contrast to the unembellished Presbyterian norm. There was nothing like them in Scotland. The cautious unobtrusiveness applied for Classical St Peter’s was totally reversed by these two exhibitionist buildings.
43For George IV, the Episcopal church (and perhaps its English revivalist architecture) made Scotland seem more comfortingly English; on his Edinburgh visit of 1822 he tried to escape attending Presbyterian service in St Giles, while in contrast, Episcopalian clergy were “received by his Majesty in the royal closet an honour exclusively conferred on them”.36 Presbyterians seem to have ignored the disrespect.
44The English Reformation, implemented by Henry VIII, was soon propagandised as Scotland’s heritage too, and Henry re-branded as a pious “national” hero whose intention for Scotland was to rescue the souls of its people, while Catholicism was propagandised as an ever-present “threat”, against which English union provided security:
The Reformation was established in England, as every one knows, before it was begun in Scotland. …
Henry the Eighth shook off the Papal yoke, in the year 1534. His strong hand achieved at once what less despotic princes could not have accomplished, viz., emancipation from the thraldom and pretended headship of the usurper of Rome … Henry had no sooner done his part, such as it was, in the work, than he endeavoured to transmit the principles of the Reformation to Scotland. …
- 37 Grace Webster, Memoir of Dr Charles Webster… with an Account of Dr Alexander Webster…, Edinburgh: S (...)
I merely advert to…facts [concerning Elizabeth Tudor], which make it apparent that unity and unanimity were the best safeguards of the two nations against the usurpations of Rome and all their attendant evils.37
45And yet the confidence level within this resurgent Episcopacy stalled at one notable point—the exterior decoration of both churches included sculpture niches. Adding “graven images” would have been a step too far, and these remain empty, even today.
46Besides union, the bigger issue being adumbrated was that Tudor England—not unwitting Scotland—brought the Reformation to Britain; Scotland should be grateful, and Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth were Protestant heroes to Scotland. Their Tudor architecture was “therefore” ecclesiastically perfect for Scotland; and patriotic. England’s heritage was that of Britain, so neo-Tudor ecclesiastical architecture was very protestant; very unionist; very pro-establishment, and therefore very patriotic. For Presbyterians, Glasgow architect David Hamilton had already been providing new parish churches with Tudor arches (Erskine, for example, 1813) and sometimes perpendicular tracery, while frontages of William Stark’s parish churches at Saline (1809-1810) and Muirkirk (1812-1813) have oversized Tudor arches.
47If this adoption of the neighbour country’s national architecture seems odd, part of the reasoning may be that Scotland had become conflicted over its own culture, faced with deciding what to erase, what to value, and what the king wanted; and desperate to stress its loyalty to the still-youthful Britain and even more youthful UK. Elites had become ashamed of their own language, purging it of what they called “Scotticisms”, and architecture was affected too. Parliament House and St Giles were each given a uniform new face, the traditional Scottish external forestair was done away with, structures such as the mercat crosses of Inverness and Edinburgh which signalled governance within “old” Scotland were removed.
48This church-driven architectural revivalism, predicated on importing English perpendicular Gothic and Tudor arches from the national Romanticism of Gothic Revival England, illustrates Scottish national identity being shifted through religious architecture to an Anglo-British national identity.
49English perpendicular Gothic typified church design from the 1810s until mid-century, but secular architecture took a different course. There was a crossover between old Scottish buildings being demolished as embarrassments and these instead providing models for replication. Revitalised by Walter Scott’s work, Scotland’s historic buildings were becoming valued, and from the 1820s, increasingly, these constituted a secular ideal for revivalists. Features such as Fyvie arches were applied to modern buildings and a new style, Scotch Baronial, evolved. Restorations of castle ruins similarly provided statements of national identity.
- 38 Miles Glendinning and Aonghus MacKechnie, Scotch Baronial: Architecture and National Identity in Sc (...)
50David Bryce (1803-1876) and his acolytes developed and popularised Scotch Baronial, contributing to and reflecting the ever more positive mood, as Scottish architectural heritage was increasingly prized. This provided for three main strands patrons would adopt: the development of revivalist Baronial into its next phases (we pass this by, recent work being available on the topic elsewhere);38 the restoration of abandoned historic structures; and, thirdly, the creation of replica ancient Scottish buildings; in each case, to provide a new life for and enjoyment of the national heritage. We begin with replicas.
51Replicas might be public and intended as public announcements, as with monuments at Haddington and Largs; or hidden within private grounds and intended instead for the pleasure of a wealthy few, as at Westerdunes in North Berwick, and Rosebery. They are always political.
- 39 Dalkeith Advertiser, 11 November 1880, 3.
- 40 Ibid.
52The 1881 Tweeddale Memorial in Haddington commemorates George Hay, the eighth Marquess of Tweeddale (1787-1876), soldier, colonial governor and owner of Yester House. The initiative for its creation came from “Some county gentlemen” (ie, wealthy lairds), 39 led by local MP Douglas Francis Wemyss-Charteris, Lord Elcho (1818–1914), heir to the earldoms of Wemyss and March and to Gosford House with its 56,739-acre estate; and ‘without much effort, something like £1500 was collected’ for a monument.40
53The architect was William Young, engaged then both nearby for Lord Wemyss and at Glasgow Municipal Buildings.41 He “made an excellent copy of the beautiful old well at Pinkie House, a former seat of the Tweeddale family”; its ‘handsomely-proportioned crown finely carved in the Elizabethan style’ (fig 4 & 5).42 The sculptor was John Rhind, the bronze bust by Giovanni Battista Amendola, 1880. The monument, approximately 7.5m high, was set prominently in front of the county buildings and courthouse where ‘county gentlemen’ would decide local issues.
Plate 4. Pinkie wellhead, 1610s: Drawing by Joseph Weekes, 1902.
Author’s collection.
Plate 5. Tweeddale Memorial, Haddington, 1881.
© author.
54Tweeddale was a British establishment figure, and the monument’s existence demonstrated publicly that the sort of person to merit such a memorial was a wealthy laird—possibly London- or England-based—who served Britain’s interests in government, army or empire. In choosing a local model, the signal was that the lairds were esteeming the locality, its heritage and thus its people, while applying the adjective “Elizabethan” implied pan-British heritage.
55The anglicised hierarchy would itself benefit from providing this memorial; it was a gift to the town, and a facility anyone could enjoy; and being of stone and bronze, it would be permanent. But it was a monument provided by elites who by that action celebrated themselves, or their “caste”, as well as the unearned privilege and entitlement which followed from that. The memorial’s permanence was a metaphor of the continuation of Scotland’s hereditary hierarchy, permanence of the hereditary principle and continuing social division, as well as the permanence of union and empire.
- 43 Northern Whig, 27 February 1937, 10.
56Beneath the heading “Great events in England”, the Northern Whig newspaper of 27 February 1937 highlighted the Battle of Largs of 1263.43 The Battle, at which the Scots defeated the Norse, became better-known following the erection at the town in 1912-1913 of a 700th anniversary commemorative monument, the project having been adopted and led by Largs Town Council.
57In September 1910, the Scottish Patriotic Association visited Largs, and:
- 44 Port-Glasgow Express, 7 September 1910, 3.
After tea Mr Eyre-Todd made a few informal but interesting remarks on the aims of the Scottish Patriotic Association, the places which had been visited, and the proposal to erect a memorial of the Battle of Largs. In regard to the latter, he said a little too much had been made of the latter struggle for independence in Scotland against the English, but the earlier struggle against the Norwegians was quite as important. The Battle of Largs was as much a turning point in Scottish history as the battle of Bannockburn.44
- 45 Ibid, 18 November 1910, 3
- 46 The Scotsman, 21 June 1911, 1.
- 47 The Scotsman, 11 July 1912, 6.
- 48 Port-Glasgow Express, 1 November 1911, 3.
58Encouragement from historian and writer George Eyre-Todd (1862-1937) might have been critical to seeing the project through on the scale it achieved. By November 1910, fund-raising was well in hand and ‘Compared with the movement to erect the Flodden memorial it was felt that the matter was progressing as well as could be expected’.45 On 21 June 1911 the Committee of the Battle of Largs Memorial Fund invited “SKETCHES of a SUITABLE MEMORIAL to COMMEMORATE THE BATTLE OF LARGS, 1263”, submissions to be lodged by 1 August.46 By July, 59 designs (“many…of the highest merit”)47 were exhibited in the Scottish Club Room of the Glasgow Exhibition.48 By April 1912 a design had been selected:
- 49 The Scotsman, 11 July 1912, 6.
Ultimately the Committee found their choice narrowed to a design which would at once resist the elements and the efforts of evil-disposed persons. …nothing was considered so appropriate as a round tower similar to those at Brechin and Abernethy and in many places in Ireland. Those structures probably belonged to an earlier period than the battle of Largs, but the towers were, according to authorities, erected for protection against the Northmen.49
59The monument would be:
- 50 Globe, 16 April 1912, 10.
a slightly reduced replica of the ancient round tower which stands beside Brechin Cathedral. The memorial will be 66 feet high, while the Brechin one is over 100ft. An expert was sent from Largs by the committee to obtain an exact copy of the details of the carving which adorns the door of the tower at Brechin, which will be reproduced. This door will be placed 8ft. above the level of the ground, in accordance with that model. The tower will be built of local whinstone, with the doorway and its surroundings of white freestone.50
- 51 Edinburgh Evening News, 12 August 1913, 4.
60James Sandford Kay was the architect. The sculpture, “Celtic in character”, was added afterwards; sponsored by Dr Robert Munro of Largs and Edinburgh (1835-1920), medical specialist, archaeologist and ethnologist, today celebrated by the Munro Lectures at Edinburgh University.51
- 52 Kilmarnock Herald and North Ayrshire Gazette, 4 August 1911, 3.
- 53 Linlithgowshire Gazette, 11 August 1911, 3.
61In late July 1911 the Scottish Patriotic Association, which took enormous interest in the Largs project and provided some funding, organised a “demonstration” at Largs “in furtherance of the proposal”, at which there was “a large and interested attendance”, chaired by Lord Glasgow, convenor of the Memorial Committee.52 The Association was described by a member, Charles W. Thomson, as “non-political. What it strove to combat was indifference towards national sentiment”. 53Though the Association was also interventionist, as for example in 1908 when it challenged the proposed design for an Australian coat of arms
- 54 The Observer, Adelaide, 4 April 1908, 47.
prepared by the English Heralds' College for the Australian Commonwealth’…‘the design includes only the cross of St. George, a sectional emblem of England, instead of the united crosses of England, Scotland, and Ireland as displayed in the Union Jack, the proper emblem of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.54
- 55 The Scotsman, 11 July 1912, 6.
- 56 Port-Glasgow Express, 5 July 1912, 2; The Scotsman, 11 July 1912, 6.
- 57 Ibid., 17 June 1912, 6.
62The monument’s location was “the second Bowen Craig” on the foreshore south of the town. At the opening ceremony on 10 July 1912, Eyre-Todd, as president of the Glasgow St Andrew Society, gave a talk.55 In the audience were the Provost and Town Council; also the laird who provided the site, the Earl of Glasgow, and Theodore Napier (1845-1924),56 a high-profile advocate of Scottish independence. Napier had presented himself the year before at the William Wallace memorial foundation stone ceremony at Elderslie.57 The laird on the other hand was a descendant of the Lord Glasgow who voted for the union with England in 1707. His castle, nearby, was enlarged in the 1710s-1720s, implying that wealth possibly derived from his vote; in the same way that the Queensberry’s 1710s-1720s expenditure at Durisdeer provided a new kirk plus an elephantine family aisle they would neither fully complete nor fully use.
63Unlike the Tweeddale memorial, which was a celebration of hierarchy, roles, entitlements, and wealth of hereditary social elites and of the establishment continuing, the Largs memorial was egalitarian. It celebrated what was considered a national achievement won by the Scottish nation—providing for its approval from all classes, including establishment elites such as Lord Glasgow, and Theodore Napier, to whom it served to promote the case for Scottish independence.
64Contrasting with the character of revivalism of the Lordship of the Isles, here the emphasis was on precise replication. “Indicative” was no longer suitable, and even the flanking sculptures were precisely replicated from the prototype.
- 58 David MacGibbon and Thomas Ross, Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland, iii, Edinburgh: (...)
- 59 The Sketch, 7 November 1923, 20; The Bystander, 7 November 1923, 30; The Scotsman, 5 May 1928.
65In 1908, Patrick and Jessie Ford built Westerdunes House to an English revivalist design by J. M. Dick Peddie. Its sophisticated setting included an orthodox 18th-century Scots revival gateway, a mini-amphitheatre, a terrace with balusters diagonally-set following the Holyroodhouse model, plus a gateway replicating that of 1692 and 1829 at Hatton House (whose design was published in 1889);58 also a Japanese garden with a miniature Mount Fuji—another replica (fig 6 & 7).59
Plate 6. Hatton House Gateway, 1692 and 1829.
© author.
Plate 7. Westerdunes, North Berwick, garden gate, c.1908.
© author.
- 60 Michael Shaw, The Fin de Siècle Scottish Revival: Romance, Decadence and Celtic Identity, Edinburgh (...)
- 61 Ibid., 122.
66The newly-fashionable japonisme, associated particularly with France, had its own slant in Scotland where it connected to neo-Celticism.60 It attracted cultural revivalists pursuing alignment with cultures considered “the other”; ie cultures rejected by English metropolitan taste or politics. France, of course, fell into that category, as demonstrated by the careers of Francophile Patrick Geddes, and John Duncan, noted for his Celtic revivalism and artwork such as Jehanne d’Arc et sa Garde Écossaise (1896). Scotland could also view Japan as a platform demonstrating Scottish technological and industrial excellence through contributions of people such as Thomas Blake Glover, or Edinburgh’s Stevenson family and Richard Henry Brunton, who built “a complete ring of lighthouses around Japan”.61
- 62 The Scotsman, 30 December 1930, 7; Patrick Ford, Side Table: 60 Short Poems, Edinburgh: Moray Pres (...)
- 63 Register House, Edinburgh. 28 Jun 1932: House of Commons debates. < https://api.parliament.uk/hist (...)
- 64 The Scotsman, 13 June 1927, 10 and 15 June 1927, 8; Government of Scotland Bill, Hansard, 13 May 1 (...)
67The Fords were patrons of numerous artists, he being Honorary President of The Art Union of the Society of Scottish Artists. 62 Ford himself, knighted in 1926, was an advocate, politician and soldier, member of the King’s bodyguard in Scotland. As MP for Edinburgh North he addressed parliament over neglect of the national records in Register House, attacking “the conditions of penury under which we live in Scotland to-day as a result of the Treasury treatment of our country”.63 And yet he opposed ceding any governmental authority to Scotland and was attacked fiercely by the Scottish Home Rule Association, accused of using Westminster’s esoteric rules to have foiled the 1927 Scottish Home Rule Bill.64
- 65 The Scotsman, 20 January 1934, 14.
- 66 Ibid., 14 December 1929, 16.
68At a Burns Supper in 1934 (the “Burns Supper” was already a customary diary date for the establishment) where “The Houses of Parliament” were toasted, Ford spoke of Burns’ “grand national patriotism”, adding his own view that “today, Burns would have been an Imperial patriot”.65 Ford stated that the word “unionist” “signified the union and the Empire and the union of all classes and sections.”66
- 67 Graeme Morton, Unionist Nationalism: Governing Urban Scotland, 1830-1860, East Linton: Tuckwell Pre (...)
69Ford was an advocate of Scottish culture and history, but was more supportive still of the establishment. Like Lord Rosebery, he exemplified what Graeme Morton has denoted “unionist nationalism”.67
- 68 Clarisse Godard Desmarest and Aonghus MacKechnie, “’An Edinburgh citizen of very ancient standing’ (...)
- 69 David MacGibbon and Thomas Ross, Castellated and Domestic Architecture, iii (1889), 569-72, 569; On (...)
- 70 Online Dictionary of Scottish Architects; John Gifford, The Buildings of Scotland: Perth and Kinros (...)
70In the 1880s, Archibald Philip Primrose (1847–1929), 5th Earl of Rosebery, showed himself to be interested in historic buildings restoration.68 The fashion for re-occupying abandoned or neglected ancient castles (exemplified by Eilean Donan, rebuilt from 1911), gradual at first, was now underway. Earlier examples included Cleish, restored from “complete ruin” in 1846-7 by John Lessels (1809-83).69 Sydney Mitchell restored Ardblair in 1894-1908 for the Blair-Oliphant family.70
- 71 Dundee Evening Telegraph, 2 February 1895, 3.
[Mitchell’s] name was first brought into prominence by his masterly reproduction of “Old Edinburgh” in connection with the exhibition held at Edinburgh some years ago, and who has since achieved a name for himself by the taste and skill he has displayed in the restoration of old castles &c.71
71In the 1880s, Rosebery built a new Barnbougle Castle as a hideaway, study and library for himself, incorporating what little survived of the ancient Barnbougle. He also had a more ambitious plan in mind, namely the replacement of neo-Tudor (ie stylistically “English”) Dalmeny House of 1814-1817 with a replication of the nearby ancient but ruinous royal palace of Linlithgow, for which Mitchell produced a scheme in 1889.
72The replicate never happened, and instead, Rosebery campaigned for the palace’s restoration. Abandoned by royalty in the 17th century, government soldiers burnt it to a shell in 1746 as an anti-Jacobite military action because it represented the rival Stuart dynasty.
73Its decline motivated Edinburgh Architectural Association to approach the government in 1891, advising that re-roofing was vital to protect it.72 In 1892, it was discussed in parliament,73 and afterwards George Shaw Lefevre MP pronounced that:
- 74 Edinburgh Evening News, 9 February 1893, 2.
We have agreed this year to spend £250 in maintaining it as “a ruin”, not in restoring it. The restoration would be a costly work, and it is a grave question whether, from an antiquarian and architectural point of view, it would be right to restore a ruin of this kind.74
74The government positioned itself with the thrifty and loveless argument that the palace had become a monument and should therefore continue as a ruin. The conservationist “pro-ruin” argument of course applies very obviously where there is sizeable doubt as to a structure’s original form (as was the case at Barnbougle), where an unsatisfactory degree of guesswork would be necessary for reconstruction. But that argument loses legitimacy when faced with a near-entire shell. Linlithgow Palace’s decline continues when it could instead have a public use and highlight the town internationally.
- 75 Parkin Heritage and Tourist Consultants et al, Linlithgow Palace: Design Feasibility Study—Final Re (...)
- 76 Linlithgowshire Gazette, 8 February 1901, 4.
- 77 The Scotsman, 2 March 1911, 9.
75The idea of restoring the palace presented itself intermittently into the 1990s when European, Heritage Lottery, and Millennium funding were possibilities,75 to be met always with rejection by the UK government or Ancient Monuments inspectors. Back in 1901, Rosebery proposed its restoration at a meeting called and chaired by himself, the object of which was to decide how best to commemorate the recently-deceased Queen Victoria. The palace was the main topic: “in its present roofless condition”, he argued, “it is almost a reproach to our nation which could without much difficulty be removed”. Architect and historian Thomas Ross (of MacGibbon and Ross) had cost a scheme at £40,000. Rosebery had arrived at the meeting well prepared to win his argument.76 And a decade later, when considering options for a suitable memorial to Edward VII in 1911, the Glasgow Institute of Architects “unanimously favoured the restoration of Linlithgow Palace.”77
- 78 Government guidebooks ignored efforts to restore the palace and propagandised the establishment pos (...)
76The government (and no doubt the monarchy) was uninterested in allocating resources beyond the minimum for Linlithgow, and as time passed, the “monument” argument gained some plausibility. By the 20th century, a restored royal palace could of course have generated potentially awkward questions over royal residency and Scotland’s status within the union, so there was now a powerful political aspect.78
- 79 London Evening Standard, 7 October 1913, 12.
77By 1913, Rosebery, having probably given up on the Linlithgow saga, had turned his attention to another of his properties, Rosebery, in Midlothian. There, in 1913-1914, on a “tree-shaded site” beside the mansion, he built a chapel and mausoleum “partially…modelled on the ancient fabric of the parish church in the neighbouring hamlet of Temple, which is part of a monastic edifice erected by David I”.79 So at last he got his replicate ancient Scottish building (fig 8 & 9).
Plate 8. Temple Church, mostly 14-17c.
© Antony McCallum, Wikimedia Commons.
Plate 9. Rosebery Chapel, 1913.
© author.
- 80 Rt Rev Kenneth MacKenzie, Lord Bishop of Argyll and the Isles, “Some Churches of a West Highland Di (...)
- 81 Online Dictionary of Scottish Architects.
78Linlithgow’s treatment contrasted with that applied to the stone shells of big religious houses such as Dunblane Cathedral, or Iona Abbey, where the Church of Scotland wanted both ownership and restoration. The resurgent Episcopal church staked a claim to Iona in 1848 when Alexander Ewing, Bishop of the Isles, held an open-air service in the ruined abbey.80 Neglected since the 16th century, a tentative restoration was underway in 1874, and in 1899 the 8th Duke of Argyll presented the ruins to the Church of Scotland. From 1908, the nave was rebuilt to designs of historian architect Dr Peter MacGregor Chalmers who had prepared an earlier restoration scheme in 1891.81 There being no record of the missing great west window meant that Chalmers had to invent something suitable. The present round-arched 5-light window was decided upon, as it suggested Celtic architecture.
- 82 MacKenzie, “Some churches”, 52; F. A. Walker, The Buildings of Scotland: Argyll and Bute, London: P (...)
79The Episcopal church claimed Columban origins and therefore, to legitimise itself in face of the Presbyterians, it remained determined to have its own base on the island. So in 1893-1894, Columba’s House was built by architect Alexander Ross. It included a figure of Saint Columba, looking over the sound of Iona, his hand raised in blessing.82
80Restoration of Iona Abbey needed no government funding. It provided no political difficulties to the establishment, and so it was facilitated by the duke of Argyll. It was far more a ruin than Linlithgow, and displayed evident earlier stonework. So there, the ‘monument’ argument could objectively have found more intellectual traction. Likewise inconsistent, the original roofs of both Linlithgow and Stirling palaces’ great halls were lost in the mid-18th century. That of Stirling now has its second new roof since then, installed following application of conservation arguments. Linlithgow, absurdly, remains a deteriorating shell, on the basis of the same conservation arguments (fig. 10).
Plate 10. Linlithgow Royal Place, rebuilt from 1424, completed 1620s, burned by the British army 1746.
© Alistair McMillan, Wikimedia Commons.
81Spin-offs from the Great Exhibition in London of 1851 included exhibitions in Scotland celebrating empire, nation, industry, etc. They were “book-ended” by Edinburgh (1886) and Glasgow (1938), at each of which replica historic architecture, with bespoke guidebooks, featured. But the narratives at each differed strongly.
- 83 Clarisse Godard Desmarest, “Commemorating the founding of the New Town”, in Clarisse Godard Desmare (...)
- 84 The Scotsman, 6 October 1885, 1.
- 85 John Charles Dunlop and Alison Hay Dunlop, The book of old Edinburgh and hand-book to the old Edin (...)
82The decision to showcase Edinburgh’s historic architecture reflected the changing attitude towards the Old Town. Deemed unsuitable for both polite living and commercial expansion, it had been replaced in the 18th century by the New Town, whose construction began in 1767. But the paradigms were now shifting, as the Old Town’s attributes, once disdained, now made it attractive, quaint, historic, and Romantic: to the extent that this was the architecture Edinburgh chose to display to the world. The idea was copied from “Old London” at London’s 1884 Exhibition,83 and it launched with a competition in 1885 to represent “Old Edinburgh”,84 the submissions all considered high quality. 85The Treasurer Thomas Gaff explained that:
- 86 The Scotsman, 7 December 1887, 10.
The associations connected with Edinburgh were such as to suggest the idea of a reproduction of some of the most historic features of the Old Town. This was ably carried out by Mr Sydney Mitchell, architect, who succeeded in a marked degree in reproducing a structure which was the admiration of all.86
83Mitchell’s idea was to “re-create” some famous but demolished Edinburgh buildings.
- 87 Dunlop and Dunlop, The book of old Edinburgh, 1886, op. cit., 2.
No one wanted to see the representation of old Scottish architecture where the reality still exists, …. The buildings chosen for the ‘Old Edinburgh Street’ in the Exhibition, and of which the erections are a faithful reproduction, have all passed away.87
84The replica buildings lined both sides of a street which was entered at one end via the Netherbow Port, while at the other end was the pend of Paul’s Wark and Holyrood Palace’s “Royal Porch”. The Old Tolbooth, Mercat Cross, and so on filled the space between.
85The accompanying guidebook-cum-compendium of historical anecdotes, illustrated by William Hole, provided information on the buildings displayed. Also,
the heart loyalty of all sorts and conditions of men to their Country and their Sovereign, in humble dependence, but with lofty faith in that Power above, who has guided and blessed the Past, who alone rules in the Present, and who will direct and guard the Future of our beloved land.
86The civic pride which permeated the pages gave way at the end to patriotism (using the slippery term “Country”—Scotland? The UK?), pro-royalty, and ultimately, religious guidance characteristic of the contemporary Scottish Presbyterian mindset. It was all extremely up-beat, with a great future anticipated, which would be built from the glories of what had been, and the civic virtues of the present.
- 88 The Scotsman, 9 September 1891, 8.
87Edinburgh’s success encouraged Glasgow to hold an International Exhibition two years later; and in 1891, a version of the Edinburgh event was made for Inverness. That event was formally opened by Inverness’s provost, the above-mentioned architect Alexander Ross.88
88Glasgow’s final Empire exhibition included an exhibit entitled “An Clachan” [= The Clachan]. Writer and biographer Leonard Mosely explained what it was:
- 89 Aberdeen Press and Journal, 3 May 1938, 4.
Doctor Colin Sinclair has built an exact replica of a Highland village, as you will find it to-day in the remoter glens or in the islands.89
89From the outset, the press was interested. For example:
- 90 Dundee Courier, 19 June 1937, 3,
Dr Colin Sinclair, the architect, explained…that it was his aim to build a clachan typical of the various phases of Highland architecture. It will include a pre-Reformation cill or chapel with a Celtic cross, and, it is hoped, a reproduction of St Molrupha’s [sic] Holy Well at Ashaig, in Skye. There is also a West Highland castle, an inn, post office, and Hebridean black house. It is expected that “natives” will be imported from the outer islands. A 250-foot long burn will tinkle over waterfalls into an imitation loch 150 feet in length.90
- 91 Dundee Courier, 29 April 1938, 29.
90The word “clachan”, primarily, is cognate with “kirkton”, but latterly applied to any small Gaelic settlement. Sinclair (1879-1957) was a Glasgow Highlander, architect and scholar, who had devised a more modest clachan for the 1911 exhibition. His “cill” [cf. Latin cella] was based on the chapel of Kilmory, in Knapdale,91 while the need for thatched cottages provoked the quest for closer authenticity:
Dr Sinclair…searched out his houses in the Highlands and Islands and made plaster moulds of entire walls. These moulds he cut up and brought to Glasgow in sections. Plaster casts were taken from the moulds, and these casts, exact reproductions to the tiniest detail of the actual walls, were nailed over a wooden framework, and the cottages were complete, waiting for the thatching. You cannot tell by the eye alone that these walls are not of actual stone. They look like the real thing. When I first walked into the Clachan I did not know that the walls were plaster casts until I tapped one of them. A hollow sort of sound resulted. It is a perfect example of camouflage.92
- 93 Colin Sinclair, An Clachan: The Highland Village (Official guide), 3, 6.
91Sinclair also wrote the official guide. Here, though, everything presented a very different tone from that of 1886 Edinburgh. Sinclair presented his ideas for modernising the traditional houses, but more realistically, for example, “The old house represents a phase in Highland life which is rapidly vanishing”. Modern industry was represented by “home industries”, West Highland slate, Bonawe granite, Skye marble, and “drums of Highland [sheep] dip at the fank on the brae”. 93
92Panels by Molly MacEwen in the castle hall depicted the Deirdre legend, a traditional story associated with both Gaelic Scotland and Ireland. The exhibit’s overarching tone was that of old-fashioned Romanticism, with occasional old-fashioned language to match:
If a Gaelic lilt is heard within the walls it is likely to be the voice of a Highland woman engaged in knitting or rug-making… Round the peat fire of glowing peat the ceilidh was wont to be held, the ancient tales were told, and the imagination of the Gael was kindled to inspire these songs which have lived on to delight the listener in every land.94
93Sinclair knew old Gaeldom was vanishing, however much there was pride in its accomplishments and value. His celebration of the Highland world looked rather more backwards than forwards, more to an ongoing fossilised past than to a past that was the springboard to a glorious future; a sort of “good-bye”, reminiscent of Walter Scott’s portrayals of old Scotland. The cultural precocity and confidence of Gaeldom’s 14th-15th centuries’ Lordship, and the swagger and forward-looking business-like optimism of 1886 Old Edinburgh, were all missing at An Clachan. While in absolute contrast the nearby and sleek Art Deco “Tait’s Tower” signalled precisely the imagery and reality of architectural modernity, and of civic optimism.
- 95 The Roman inheritance was part of Scotland’s celebrated heritage too. Sir James Clerk had a replica (...)
94Connecting architecture to the overarching narrative and mutating trajectories of Scotland’s political history over the past long millennium, this article demonstrates that architectural agendas match the fluctuating ideologies and nationalisms up to the earlier interwar period, and highlight how various ideologies that have come, have gone, and continue, are seen in what people built.95
95It argues that the examination of what people wanted to replicate, and why, provides relevant insights into various moments of change, be that replicating ideas in historic architecture, or actual physical replicates. The point, consistently, was to display something important that had been lost sight of, or which, as with the Episcopal church in the 1810s, was introduced to display neighbour excellence within an anglicising environment.
96Sir Robert Lorimer provided revivalism with a sort of postscript with the 1920s Scottish National War Memorial, whose interior copies rather than replicates Falkland palace’s façade discussed above, and which is festooned with references to British and UK military triumphs. Baronial architecture had recessed by then from its strongly assertive character into something more indicative, as seen in the post-Lorimerian stonework patterning of housing by Edinburgh city architect Ebeneezer J. MacRae, the harled and occasionally-turreted council housing by the burgh architects of Dalkeith and elsewhere, and still, in the occasional contemporary work. Gaeldom’s story in particular seems from the episodes discussed here to have had a beginning, a middle and an end; starting with the internationally-significant innovations of 7-8th centuries Iona, partly-revived by a buoyant 14th-15th century lordship, and closing with what seems an acknowledgment at the 1938 Empire Exhibition of its having more of a past to ponder over than any viable future.
- 96 E. Mairi MacArthur, Iona Celtic Art: The Work of Alexander and Euphemia Ritchie, Iona: The New Iona (...)
97Even before the turn of 20th century, people were enjoying the Celtic Revival, and as we saw, they wanted Columban Iona back, to celebrate and enjoy it. From 1900, Iona-resident jewellers Alexander and Euphemia Ritchie produced Celtic revival metalwork for the island’s tourist market as well as architectural fittings and memorial panels, for example to members of the Argyll family at Inveraray and Kirkapol on Tiree, as well as London’s Crown Court Church.96 The 1913 Battle of Largs Memorial had also referenced a Celtic Scotland in its design, and by doing so had targeted that age therefore as a cultural and martial “high” period, the foe being the Norse; while in these same years the Fords at Westerdunes avoided martial imagery, simply enjoying instead an eclectic admixture of modern trends plus Scottish and English heritage as intertwined.
- 97 Cairns Craig, Out of History: Narrative Paradigms in Scottish and British Culture, Edinburgh: Polyg (...)
- 98 Margery Palmer McCulloch, “‘A very curious emptiness’: Walter Scott and the Twentieth-Century Scott (...)
98Revivalism’s winding-down interwar period coincided with the emergence of the Scottish national movement as a formalised political party, and of the Scottish literary Renaissance led by anti-Romantic Hugh MacDiarmid (“the man who…single-handedly, revitalised Scottish culture after the First World War”).97 Now, the roles of influential Scottish unionists and Romantics such as the long-adored Sir Walter Scott were attacked by intellectuals from what Margery McCulloch denoted the “anti-Scott party”.98 And in that context, Romantic Baronialism or replications had reduced prestige. In order to avoid presenting Scotland as a political entity, the BBC’s 1960s contribution instead provided an undead “White heather club” Romanticism, an establishment revivalism dressed up as a tartan reality, with talented artists portraying the country with a backwards-looking imagery. The programme took a beating from young intellectuals, writers and musicians who rejected it as primitivizing, offensive and absurd.
- 99 Foster and Jones, St John’s Cross, 162.
99The monolithic ringed Celtic cross, the most ubiquitous, or stereotyped, replica of all, emerged as a favoured religious and funerary motif from the mid 19th century and remains popular today. St John’s Cross on Iona, fragmented beyond re-assembly, was replicated in concrete in 1970 and set in the original position fronting the abbey; where an added value of the replica is that the summer sun throws the cross’s shadow onto the wall of the shrine in which St Columba lies buried.99
100The Celtic cross found a particular value as a World War One memorial type. People in the lacerated communities found comfort from referencing their Celtic or Gaelic heritage, with St Martin’s Cross a much-used model. As is seen also in France, at for example the Argyll & Sutherland memorial at Beaumont Hamel. Its Argyllshire symbolism and motto “Cruachan” all represented the poor boys who are still out there. And this is my last example of a replica—the one, perhaps, with the strongest symbolism of all.
