The Scottish Chateau: The Country House of Renaissance Scotland

by Charles Mc Kean (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $53.20

  In this work, the author overturns the theories that Scottish Renaissance country houses were merely 'castles' or fortified houses, alongside a country left behind in a backwater, and reveals 16th-century Scotland as vivid, colourful and European.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2001

  $48.26

  The author examines how the Scottish country house was transformed by romanticism (including the discovery of the mythical bard Ossian by Macpherson) and the picturesque, then revived mid-19th century as Baronial haunts, before a large scale reoccupation and restoration from the late 1970s. The houses occupied a European tradition as castle-wise country houses , with ornamental battlements, large pleasure gardens and lavish vestments. Properties featured include Crathes, the House of the Binns, the Palace of Huntly and the Earl's Palace in Kirkwall. The book also focuses on the lives of the occupants, including Sir James Hamilton of Finart, the Earls of Morton, Huntly and Arran, and the Duke of Chatelherault, and discusses important architects such as Robert Adam, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and David Bryce. Using contemporary descriptions, archives and documents, mixed with reconstructions of buildings and some humour, this book is a lively read illustrated by portraits, gardens, interiors and landscapes.