Kinross House

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Front facing the city

Kinross House is a manor house built in the 1680s in the Scottish town of Kinross on the banks of Loch Levens in the Council Area Perth and Kinross and traditional county of Kinross-shire in the east of the Central Lowlands . It is located directly opposite the to castle Iceland past Loch Leven Castle , in the 1567/68 Scottish Queen Mary Stuart was jailed until she succeeded spectacularly flight. Kinross House is considered the first and most important early example of neo-classical - Palladian architecture in Scotland.

history

Back to the garden and the lake

In 1675, the "gentleman architect" Sir William Bruce acquired land and rule around Kinross from William Douglas, 9th Earl of Morton . In addition to Loch Leven Castle, the property also included the previous Newhouse of Lochleven , which was built by William Douglas, 6th Earl of Morton on almost the same site and which was finally demolished in 1723. It was not until ten years after the purchase that Bruce was able to devote himself to his main personal work in a gentlemanly manner, but not entirely voluntarily, when Charles II , in whose service he was, died in 1685. When Bruce was repeatedly imprisoned as Jacobite as a result of the Glorious Revolution of 1688/89 until the end of his life , he continued work on Kinross House. The details of the exact construction time of Kinross House vary somewhat. According to the entry in Historic Scotland , it was built in the years 1684–1695, whereas the garden began as early as 1679 or 1683 and was completed by 1700. Both under the management and according to plans of the new landlord Sir William, who designed the house and garden as a unit from the beginning.

In the 300 years since Sir William died at an advanced age in 1710, his property, as a magnificent total work of art, has been subject to constant alternation between decay and restoration true to the original, depending on the love and wealth of the respective owner. In 1777 the wealthy merchant George Graham acquired the property from Bruce's descendants. When his son Thomas Graham died in 1819, the entire inventory was sold. The property, which had passed to James Montgomery, husband of Thomas' youngest daughter, remained uninhabited for the next 80 years. It was only when Sir Basil Montgomery took up residence there in 1902 that the house and garden blossomed again in full splendor. After nearly 200 years in the Montgomery's ownership, the English businessman Donald Fothergill bought Kinross House as a family residence in 2011 and carried out a comprehensive restoration that won the Historic Houses Association's Restoration Award in 2013 .

Line of sight to Loch Leven Castle

garden

The entire designed area extends over an area of ​​177 hectares , of which the landscaped garden, including the more wooded areas, takes up the majority. Bruce's (landscape) architecture and garden art were influenced by stays in the Netherlands and France. With the addition of contemporary continental, especially French style elements in his landscape design, he did pioneering work in this field in Britain at Kinross House . Worked out particularly impressive he has it headed from the avenue to the city through the main doors of the house terraces throughout the garden through to the shores of Loch Leven-reaching and in Lochleven Castle as Point de vue ( 'Focus') ending line of sight .

meaning

The building has been listed in Category A of the Scottish Monument Classification since 1971 and is therefore classified as a nationally or internationally significant architectural monument. Since 1987 the garden has also been included in Historic Scotland. It is considered one of the most beautiful in Scotland.

In his travelogue The whole island of Great Britain , Daniel Defoe stated in 1726 that there is no more beautiful and perfectly shaped example of the architecture of a private gentleman's seat than Kinross House in Scotland, perhaps even the whole of Britain .

Web links

Commons : Kinross House  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ THE HISTORY. kinrosshouse.com, accessed August 27, 2013 .
  2. ↑ a b Listed Building - Entry . In: Historic Scotland .
  3. ^ Kinross House. Gazetteer for Scotland, accessed August 29, 2013 .
  4. ↑ a b c Garden and Designed Landscape - entry . In: Historic Scotland .
  5. ^ Kinross House Gardens. perthshire.co.uk, accessed August 29, 2013 .
  6. ↑ timeline. kinrosshouse.com, accessed August 29, 2013 .
  7. ^ Kinross House wins restoration award. BBC News , August 8, 2013, accessed August 29, 2013 .
  8. ↑ Nick Drainey: Recognition for restoration of Kinross House. The Times , August 9, 2013, accessed August 29, 2013 .
  9. ↑ Kinross House Garden. Gardenvisit.com, accessed September 1, 2013 .
  10. ^ Kinross House. (No longer available online.) Gartenmagazin-tv.de, archived from the original on June 30, 2012 ; Retrieved August 29, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.gartenmagazin-tv.de
  11. ↑ Home. (No longer available online.) Kinrosshouse.com, archived from the original on September 11, 2013 ; Retrieved August 29, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. “At the west end of the lake, and the gardens reaching down to the very water's edge, stands the most beautiful and regular piece of architecture, for a private gentleman's seat, in all Scotland, perhaps in all Britain, I mean the house of Kinross. " Daniel Defoe : A tour thro 'the whole island of Great Britain, divided into circuits or journies. , Volume 3, 1726 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kinrosshouse.com

Coordinates: 56 ° 12 ′ 10.8 "  N , 3 ° 24 ′ 34.4"  W.