1 Early in 1976 a request from the Hopetoun House Preservation T rust for advice on certain aspects of the history of the house provided the stimulus to investigate the building papers in some detail. These papers have been used by other architectural historians and a certain amount of information on the house has been published by John Fleming in articles in Country Life on 5 and 12 January 1956, in the same author’s Robert Adam and his Circle in Edinburgh and Rome (1962) and in the catalogue of the Scottish Arts Council’s exhibition Sir William Bruce 1630—ijio, written and compiled by John Dunbar in 1970. The account given here is intended to amplify, and occasionally to correct, what has already been published on the house. The essential facts that emerge from the documents have been reported in Colin McWilliam’s spirited account of Hopetoun in The Buildings of Scotland: Lothian (1978). The description of the house as ‘much the finest seat in Britain’ is a contemporary assessment taken fromjohn Macky, A Journey through Scotland (1723), p. 205.

2 The Hopetoun Manuscripts are catalogued in the National Register of Archives (Scotland), survey no. 888.1 am obliged to Lord Linlithgow for permission to consult these papers and to Mr Basil Skinner, Miss Ierne Grant and Mrjohn Dunbar for assistance with particular problems.

3 Campbell, Colen op. cit., 11, 4 and 75-77.Google Scholar

4 Adam, William op. cit., pis 14-19.Google Scholar

5 Hopetoun MSS Bundle 262. The text of Bachope’s contract runs as follows: ‘it is contracted, agreed and engaged betwixt Charles Hope of Hopetoun with consent of his curators or quorum of them undersubscribing, and they as taking burden on them for him in respect of his minority to the effect underwritten . . . ’. The contract is signed by Bachope, Charles Hope, and Sir William Bruce, Margaret Hope and Alexander Hope, Lord Rankeillor as Hope’s curators. The contract with Alexander Eizat for timberwork, signed 6January 1699, uses identical language.

6 The account bears a long endorsement which, as it describes a part of the design, is worth quoting extensively: ‘This accompt of pretended addition work given in by Tobias Bachope to Hopetoun extending to ninehundred thretie seven pound, I3sh9d Scots. And was seen and reversed by Sir Wm. Bruce, and allbeit that by his determination after compairing the articles with the contract and draught and writ under his hand there appeared but little ground for most of their articles yet Hopetoun for Tobias his incuradgement and upon his express renuncing of all such other clames in time comeing dureing the progress of the work to the finishing thereof, unless Hopetoun shall order any thing new to be done other ways than is contained in the contract and draught, and upon the said Mr. Tobias his undertakeing to take down the two palestors upon the south and north syd of the porch, the stones thereof not being sufficient, and upon his undertakeing to put up the said pillasters of new sufficient clean stone — Hopetoun has thought fitt to allow the said account wholly as it stands and has given ane prescipt for the som upon Thomas Pringle’. The endorsement, dated 9 March 1701, is signed by Bachope and witnessed by Lord Rankeillor as one of Hope’s curators, and by James Black and George Sheriff, both servants of Charles Hope. From the endorsement it is evident that Bruce supplied not only the plans but a written specification for the works which he, in some measure, also supervised.?

7 All the building documents for the Bruce period at Hopetoun are in bundle 262. Several are currently exhibited in the house. The Hopetoun aisle is well illustrated in Hubert Fenwick, Architect Royal (1970), which discusses Bruce’s career and Caroline architecture in Scotland. The last work documented in the Bruce house is for alterations by William Eizat carried out in 1709 including wainscot in the ‘Cide Chamer’ and altering a door in the garden room.

8 The pattern of three rooms linked as bed chamber, dressing room, and closet is common to the architecture of Sir Roger Pratt, at Coleshill, of William Samwell, at the Grange and at Eaton Hall, and of Bruce at Kinross and Craigiehall. Bruce and Samwell will have known each other as both worked as gentleman-architects at Ham House between 1671 and 1675. Contacts with Pratt are less likely. Bruce’s architectural style is distinctly different from his English contemporaries. Bruce does not make use of the dormer windows that are such a marked feature in Pratt’s and Samwell’s architecture and his preference for high clear roofs, tall chimneys and, on occasion, an applied giant order seems rather to derive from Dutch architecture, which he knew at first hand, and particularly from the example of Philips Vingboons, prints of whose architecture were in circulation in seventeenth-century Scotland.

9 Richardson, Margaret ed., Catalogue of the Drawings Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects, S. (1975), p. 86 Google Scholar, James Smith, the Elder, [5], 16, 35, 42, 43.

10 Vit. Brit., 1, 47 and 111, 20. Stourhead as designed by Campbell (Vit. Brit., hi, 41) is also a Greek cross plan type. All these examples are however later than Hopetoun. William Ill’s Royal palace of Het Loo in the Netherlands as remodelled by Jacob Roman about 1692 is a possible source for Bruce’s layout of the main block and pavilions at Hopetoun, for this see Kuyper, W. Dutch Classicist Architecture (Delft, 1980), pi. 302.Google Scholar

11 Le Grand Marot published c. 1680 offers a number of sources for common motifs in Bruce’s elevations. One persistently French feature is Bruce’s use of an eaves pediment over two — rather than three — bays. At Hopetoun this is clearly taken over from its earlier use by Bruce at Cragiehall (for the Second Earl of Annandale, Charles Hope’s father-in-law after 1699) but in origin the motif is French appearing in Le Grand Marot in designs by Le Due, Le Muet, Le Mercier, and Le Vaux. Bernini’s designs for the Louvre in the same publication offer a clear source for Bruce’s use of isolated giant order pilasters at Kinross.

12 Defoe, D. A Tour through Great Britain 1724-26, p. 722.Google Scholar

13 The difficulty of applying a parapet to the front of the first version of Hopetoun may be demonstrated by reference to the elevation of an unidentified country house by William Talman ( Colvin, H. and Harris, J. eds, The Country Seat (1970), p. 83) which seems similar in elevation to what Bruce must first have proposed.Google Scholar

14 It seems possible that the main block at Hopetoun originally had four identical suites of apartments — as Campbell states — though the plan he published shows one large room in the north-east corner of the house. The great dining room was ultimately located here yet quite clearly it was to be found in the first plan, as at Kinross, above the entrance hall. Both Campbell and Mackay describe a great room at first-floor level. One of Lord Hopetoun’s improvements was to bring this down to the main floor.

15 It may be noted that Bruce’s symmetry is not absolute and that the two pavilions were to have been of different sizes, that on the north being smaller to allow three windows for the great dining room. The interior arrangement of the wings is also different, for there are more dressing rooms and closets (and fewer bedrooms) in the south wing and a better stair to connect it to the house. It is probable that the north wing was intended for the accommodation of servants while the south wing was used by the family, as it is still today.

16 As Adam leaves them out it seems probable that the cupola and balustrade shown in Vitruvius Britannicus were never built. Campbell describes the cupola as of stone but this could hardly have been supported on the existing roof trusses: it may well have been omitted when the decision was taken to change the main stair from masonry to a timber construction. Other alterations in the original contract were to reduce the heights of the chimney stacks specified as being 11 ft, like those at Kinross, though in execution the full height is only 8 ft 6 in. None of the existing chimneys bears any trace of an attached balustrade.

17 Powis House, Vit. Brit., 1, 42, uses the same attic and order of giant Corinthian pilasters that were ultimately to be employed at Hopetoun. Webb’s block at Greenwich pi. 88 might be considered as a more remote source.

18 For Kinross House see Vit. Scot., pis 61 and 62, Mark Girouard, ‘Kinross House’, Country Life, 25 March 1965, and Dunbar, j. G. ‘Kinross House’, in The Country Seat, ed. Colvin and Harris, 1970.Google Scholarxs

19 This contract (cited by Fleming, John in Robert Adam and his Circle in Edinburgh and Rome, p. 45) has been mislaid.Google Scholar

20 Hopetoun MSS Bundle 636. All the documents referring to building work done by William Adam for the first and second Earls are in this bundle.

21 The door to this private vestibule is seen to the left of the principal steps in pi. xx. The creation of this lobby and private access to the house was no doubt to enable Lord Hopetoun and his family to come and go with comparative ease while the north addition was being built and the old front was refaced. The door is still used by the family today though Adam’s straight stair has been removed to create one large drawing room above.

22 This proposal may be inferred partly from the account for building the south addition (see above) and from an undated estimate for the front. In building the south addition Adam had been required to provide three Corinthian capitals for the giant order pilasters of his design, yet in Hopetoun, as it exists today, a fourth identical pilaster fills the corner between the old house and Adam’s addition. The location of this pilaster (and indeed of the next one to it across the centre part of the façade) are in a part of the house that must have been reconstructed when Adam made his first addition about 1722. Had the present design been envisaged at that time the masons would surely have built in the corner pilaster as their work went ahead. The estimate for the front, which is presumably pre-1728, is endorsed: ‘Estimate of the East Front of Hopetoun House, Extending to the North East Corner of Old House, preserving the present Portico and placeing only one Pillaster on each corner of the breaking and carrying on the entablature and attick plan as in the new building’.

23 A small miscellaneous collection of continental architectural drawings has recently come to light at Hopetoun. These include, amongst other drawings, a design for a two-storey belvedere by Andrea Pozzo marked in ‘Braccie Lucchese’; a French plan (c. 1700) of a two-storey villa with a three-bay arcaded centre marked in ‘pieds du Roi’; an eleven-bay, two-storey Italianate palazzo of late seventeenth-century character and two sections of a three-storey internal hall and of a Baroque chapel. There is also a note of instructions, in Italian, on how to establish the proportions of an entablature and cornice. None of these drawings is highly finished or ‘handsome’ in itself, which suggests that they were acquired for interest rather than show. The style suggests purchases made by the first Earl rather than his son who was in Italy between 1725 and 1727.

24 A letter of 1716 from Lord Hopetoun to the Duke of Montrose (Scottish Record Office, G.D. 220/5/617) reports that he has got drafts of his house from Lord Hyndford, ‘but the trouble this country is in has put everything of that kind out of our mind’. At this date the Duke of Montrose was building a house in Glasgow to designs of Alexander McGill. Lord Hyndford is not noted as an architectural amateur and possibly was responsible for no more than carrying the drawings to Scotland.

25 Hopetoun MSS Bundle 455. This relates to a loan from Lord Hopetoun to the Duke about 1731.

26 For Cannons see Badeslade, j. and Rocque, j. Vitruvius Britannicus volume the Fourth (1739), pis 24-27.Google Scholar The New House intended for the Duke ofChandos at Marlebone, pis 28-29, bears, likePowis House (seen. 17 above) a clear relationship to the centre of the new front at Hopetoun. Lord Linlithgow has drawn my attention to another possible source of advice for Hopetoun in Alessandro Galilei who made designs for various British and Irish patrons between I7i4and 1719. It is notable that the first great classical house in Ireland, Castletown, Co. Kildare, which Galilei designed, is flanked by colonnaded quadrants similar in scale and effect to those at Hopetoun. If the unidentified designs received by the Earl in 1716 (see n. 24 above) came from Galilei that might explain the two- bay, four-storey quadrants of William Adam’s additions which have no parallel in British architecture. For Galilei at Castletown see Country Life, 27 March 1969.

27 Hopetoun MSS Bundle 392.

28 None of the building papers that survive from this period (Hopetoun MSS Bundle 636) make any mention of Bruce’s colonnades. When William Adam began to build the new north wing in 1728 the memorandum of his agreement made specific reference to what he had to take down and to what he was permitted to keep. This mentions ‘all the hewn stone above the lintels of the present old Front and all the hewen work of the little north pavilion or staircase’ as well as the passages and stone of the north offices. This north pavilion sounds like the one specified in Bachope’s first contract of 1698, so we may assume that the northern half of Bruce’s larger scheme was never put in hand. This state of the building’s construction is represented in the second plan in Fig. 1.

29 The distance between the centres of the half columns at the start of the Bruce colonnade is 145 ft (measured on the plan) or 141 ft (measured on the elevation). The column is 25 ft forward from the face of Bruce’s main façade. On Adam’s plans for Hopetoun the distance between the giant pilasters that frame the flat sections of his additions (including the face of the pilasters) is between 134 and 138 ft. This means that Bruce’s colonnades could have been accommodated in the new additions and would have begun just inside the shaft of the corner pilaster, against the first bay of the flat extensions. Adam continued the floor levels and string courses of the Bruce house in his own additions, so it would have been possible to unite the colonnades with the façade in a logical way. The face of the Adam addition, like Bruce’s columns, stands 25 ft forward from the main façade. If the Earl and his architect did consider retaining the first colonnade design — and Macky’s description says only that the court is to be extended — then this possibility would explain the rather curious position of the circular stairs in each of the Adam additions, as these could have connected directly, and very neatly, with the colonnades whose level was half way between the basement and the main floor.

The bold effect that such an overlapping of the façade by the quadrants would create, while distinctly unorthodox, has a parallel in a scheme drawn up for Lord Mar at Urbino in 1718 for a house in Stjames’s Park (Register House Plans 13256 f. 32). Here Doric quadrant colonnades are carried across the front of flanking pavilions whose outer bays are overlapped in a way very similar to what might have been the case at Hopetoun.

30 The columns of the present colonnades at Hopetoun are built of half drums in regular courses of i6in. Each column, from base to the soffit ofthe entablature, is 19 ft 6 in. whereas those in Campbell’s plate of the Bruce house seem to be about 18 ft high. It would have been perfectly possible for Adam when re-erecting any columns in a new location to let in an extra drum of 16 in as the Hopetoun columns have no entasis on the lower part of the shaft and rise as pure cylinders for the first five courses. In the agreement of prices for the south colonnade it may be noted that no allowance was ‘to be given to Mr. Adam for erecting the Pillars or building the Entablature’ though this note follows immediately upon the agreed prices for new work which includes columns.

31 Vitruvius Scoticus, which was not published until about 1820, normally consists of 180 plates numbered from 1 to 160. Twenty have duplicate numbers. There is no letterpress and little consistency as to contents where duplicate plates are involved. Not all copies contain all the plates ofboth schemes for Hopetoun. For a discussion of the history of the book see the facsimile edition, Harris, Paul publishers (Edinburgh, 1980), introduction by Simpson, James pp. 6-10.Google Scholar

32 The addition which the change of design made necessary on the south colonnade is mentioned in the Memorandum of 7 May 1736 where ‘it is found that the addition of three intercolumations yet to be made to the south colonnade, so as to correspond with the north colonnade, will amount to Forty two pounds sterling’. In a measurement of work made later, on 16 October 1742, this addition to the colonnade is described as complete.

33 Fleming, John Robert Adam and his Circle, pp. 92-93 Google Scholar, attributes the wings to Robert Adam and dates them to about 1752.

34 ‘Work done by Mr. Adams men [John Adam] from 1st March to 27june 1750’ (Hopetoun MSS Bundle 636).

35 The designs for the interior of Hopetoun are incoherent, in some cases mutually incompatible, and give the impression that they are ideal notions of the architect produced at best as samples for his patron. The scheme to create the Tribune (Vit. Scot., pi. 15) would never have worked as it left the main block of the house without any back stair (the two straight flights connect only with the basement). Adam’s section with a tall hall the same height as the portico reflects the influence of Vitruvius Britannicus on the architect. It also proposes a Tribune by removing Bruce’s stair but shows the resulting space as octagonal while it is square in the plans.

36 ‘Account The Rt. Hon. the Earl ofHopetoun to William Adam Architect in Edinburgh—£270. 11s. 9’/6d. paid 7 Aug 1744’. Items included are ‘wainscot planks’ in 1739; ‘a pedestal of statuary marble for the Library’ in April 1740; another pedestal for the Garden Parlour in July 1740; ‘a purple marble hearth’, and ‘a lintel, jambs and plinths of a white and veined Chimney being thick marble and Italian moulds’ for the ‘New Drawingroom’ and chimneys for the private drawing room and private dining room, all in February 1741. Mirror glasses were supplied in October that year and brass locks and bells in April 1743.

37 ‘Abstract of Mr. Adam’s accounts made out from such measures as had been taken & from the plans’.

38 The account for this was submitted on 16June and paid on 27 October 1750. It came to £214 18r. 7d. (Hopetoun MSS, Envelope H.2478).

39 ‘Memorandum for the passage at the back of the south colonnade and other things connected with it, 7 April and 10 May 1755’.

40 Lord Hopetoun had to pay considerably more than had originally been estimated for the alteration of the centre of the façade. In the extra cost the dismantling of the old front proved a major item. John Adam had estimated the job would employ four masons and six labourers about six weeks, a total of 144 days work for the masons. The bill presented for this item ran to 2,052 days costing £171 3 r. 8 d. instead of the £18 i6i. of the estimate.

41 In 1763 James Nome’s account for various painting jobs at Hopetoun was queried by the Earl who asked for notes on his prices in previous bills. The earlier accounts are now lost but the notes taken from them are sufficient to identify the rooms he worked on.

42 ‘Memorandum for the alteration of the private Diningroom at Hopetoun House’, Hopetoun MSS Bundle 639.

43 The completion of the hall appears to have been held up by the marble floor. Coornhart took over two years to assemble the 234 matching white slabs of which, with a 7 in marble base and border, it is composed. These were received late in 1753 and laid in March 1754.

44 This chimney-piece, taken from Ware’s Designs of Inigo Jones, was transferred in the nineteenth century to the entrance hall.

45 Hopetoun MSS Bundle 384.

46 Dawson, John was apprenticed to the Anglo-Danish stucco worker, Charles Stanley, in the Parish of Stjohn, Westminster, in 1738, and returned to work for the Adam brothers in Scotland about 1750; seejohn Dunbar, ‘The Building of Yester House 1670-1878’, The Transactions of the East Lothian Antiquarian and Field Naturalists Society, XIII (1972), 32 and n. 73.Google Scholar

47 Fleming, Adam and his Circle, p. 92.Google Scholar

48 It is clear that John Adam ran the brothers’ Edinburgh office after his father’s death. It is always he who corresponds with Lord Hopetoun and for the years 1750 to 1753 Robert was regularly at Fort George from May to September during which time many crucial decisions had to be made at the house. This view of John’s responsibility is rather supported by a letter from Robert Adam when abroad in 1755 reporting that he had heard from Charles Hope that Lord Hopetoun was afraid Robert would find fault with everything that had been done at Hopetoun House (Scottish Record Office, C.D. 18/4783). Robert’s contribution to Hopetoun is probably to be limited to the design of the caryatid chimney-piece for the great drawing room, for which he sent a drawing from Rome on 13 May 1755 (Hopetoun MSS Bundle 621) and to the purchase in Florence in 1757 of paintings for Lord Hopetoun.