Silo View And Nursery Cottages, The Glen, Traquair, Scottish Borders

Description

Glen Estate masons and joiners, circa 1880 with house added 1903. Single storey, 8-bay, rectangular-plan vernacular former gardeners' bothy and store with diagonally attached wing walls to front angles terminating in square ashlar pier (forming frame yard); to road, later attached single storey, 4-bay, rectangular-plan gable entranced estate cottage. Coursed whinstone rubble with sandstone ashlar dressings and long and short quoins; coursed whinstone rubble walls with semi-circular copes and droved ashlar piers with chamfered arrises and pyramidal cap.

NW (SILO VIEW) ELEVATION: low wall with central entrance, path leading Silo View: wide central bay rising into gablehead with pitched timber entrance canopy (with plain barge boarding, drop brace finial, supported on timber uprights resting on ashlar corbels) shielding boarded door with small envelope fanlight to left and narrow window to right, centrally placed carved date stone (1903) surmounting; to flanks, bipartite windows with ashlar mullions. Rear of Nursery Cottage range adjoined to rear and projecting to flanks.

SW ELEVATION: to right, blind gable end of Nursery Cottages with diagonally placed frame yard wall adjoining angle at right and door to left return. Adjoining and recessed to left, 2-bay end of Silo View with 2 regularly placed windows and to centre, shouldered wallhead stack. Garden diagonally enclosed by medium height whinstone rubble boundary wall (which adjoins that of walled garden to S).

SE (NURSERY COTTAGES) ELEVATION: single storey, 8-bay former gardeners? bothy and store with semi-glazed entrance doors to bays 4 and 7, windows to rest of irregularly placed bays (bays 7 and 8 appear subsided but have been like this since built); diagonally placed wing walls (described in SW and NE ELEVTIONS) form SE facing frame yard with brick cold frames (glazed lids now missing).

NE ELEVATION: to left, blind gabled end of nursery cottage with diagonally placed frame yard wall adjoining angle at left. Much recessed to right, end of Silo View (see SW ELEVATION).

To Silo View, 8-pane glazing in timber sash and case windows (with 6-panes to upper sash and 2 vertically placed panes to lower sash), similar 6-pane window to right of entrance door (4-panes to upper sash and 2-panes to lower sash). To Nursery Cottage, 8-pane glazing in timber sash and case windows. Pitched grey slate roof (piended to Silo View) with lead ridging, flashing and valleys. Painted cast-iron rainwater goods (some later plastic replacements to Nursery Cottages). Tall ashlar shouldered wallhead stacks to Silo View with projecting shouldered neck copes and tall single cans; short ashlar roofline stack to Nursery Cottages with paired plain cans, metal roofline ventilator to NE.

INTERIOR: in use as a residential house and store rooms.

Statement of Interest

Part of an A-Group with all other Glen estate buildings. The Glen estate can be traced as far back as 1296 when Sarra of the Glen swore allegiance to King Edward I of England. The estate remained in the family's hand until around 1512, when the grounds became fragmented and parts were sold to neighbouring landowners and families. By the 1700's, there were 2 main parts of the estate, Easter and Wester Glen. Easter Glen was sold to Alexander Allan (an Edinburgh banker) in 1796 for #10,500. At this point, the house was a fairly small plain farmhouse. His son, William Allan (Lord Provost of Edinburgh) was responsible for enlarging and extending the house, the architect being his friend William Playfair (see The Temple, listed separately); even after improvement it was still not regarded as being fit for a landowner's principal residence. The 3.500-acre estate was bought in 1852/3 by Sir Charles Tennant, owner of the chemical works of St. Rollox, Glasgow, for #33,140. The house was by then outdated and not suited to modern family life; he commissioned David Bryce to design a baronial style house, to which a tower (also by Bryce) was added in 1874. Charles Tennant was a well-known patron of horticulture and the fine arts as well as a successful industrialist. He improved the estate landscape (1860-1890) and was responsible for the building of a school, farm, worker's and estate cottages, walled kitchen garden and kennels making the Glen virtually self-sufficient. Robert Lorimer carried out internal remodelling after a fire in 1905, also added some garden terraces and later redesigned part of the adjacent walled garden. It is believed that part of the NW wall (including the gatepiers and gates) were part of an older enclosed garden on the site; earlier maps show an enclosure with rounded ends directly opposite the farm steading. To the SE of this, a plantation area ran NE-SW before becoming a grassed area, which terminated in the arched and buttressed SE wall. By the 1890's, around 14 gardeners were employed to tend to the kitchen, walled flower and formal gardens. A team of horses was used to cut the grass and they wore special shoes so as not to damage it as they went around. There were an impressive amount of glasshouses, of which only the remains of 2 survive and one complete one with a potting shed range adjoining to rear. The intact glasshouse faces SE and has a row of adjoined sheds to the rear, which would have been used for potting and storing bulbs and tools. The sheds over look a cobbled frameyard and bounding the yard to the NW is a row of garden bothies (now Nursery Cottages and Silo View) which formerly provided accommodation for the gardeners. From this range runs 2 diagonal walls, which provided shelter for the frameyard. The brick cold frames remain intact, although they are slightly lower than they once were. Originally their rears were slightly higher than the sills of the cottages and were covered by timber and glazing panels. These ensured the young plants received light but not any damage from frost or cold winds. Another range of frames was aligned with the left diagonal wall, but these have been lost. As this was the flower and formal garden, it is likely the frames were used for decorative plants and flowers, as the kitchen garden is located on the other side of the estate road and burn. The newer cottage, Silo View was added to the NW in 1903. The gardens are less formal today but still add a fine aspect to the landscape. Listed as a good surviving example of walled garden architecture and for its importance near the centrepiece of an intact later 19th century estate (other estate buildings are listed separately).

External Links

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