London Scottish House

London Scottish House is a drill hall built between 1985 and 1988 to designs by Duncan Cardow of TP Bennett for the London Scottish Regiment, replacing their previous drill hall at 59 Buckingham Gate. The building incorporates important elements relocated from that earlier drill hall, which was constructed between 1882 and 1886 by John MacVicar Anderson.

Materials and Construction

The building is constructed of contrasting light and dark red brickwork with aluminium-framed windows. The roof structure and galleries are of wrought iron relocated from the earlier drill hall.

Plan and Layout

The building has an overall T-shaped plan. A rectangular, three-storey, flat-roofed administrative range fronts onto Horseferry Road, with a centrally placed, square-plan, double-galleried drill hall to the rear. A lower-height, flat-roofed, three-storey ancillary range extends along Elverton Street, separated from the front range by a single-storey entrance to underground garaging. On the raised ground floor, an entrance lobby leads directly into the drill hall, with lifts on the south side and the main stair on the north. Offices are arranged on corridors either side of the entrance lobby. The second floor of the front range contains the main reception and mess rooms.

Exterior

The building is designed in a Post-Modern, neo-Classical style. The principal elevation onto Horseferry Road is symmetrical and comprises 13 bays divided above the ground floor by giant pilasters of light-red brick, paired at the ends of the range, which contrast with the dark brick walling. The central three bays containing the entrance project slightly and are topped with a pediment. The capitals are formed by ten courses of cogged brickwork and separated by panels of corbelled brickwork. The cornice, topped by a parapet, consists of a dog-tooth string-course below courses of stacked headers. The first and second floors are separated by rectangular panels of 12 glazed blue tiles with a surround of narrow bricks laid on edge.

The ground floor has a plinth with rusticated brick panelling above and a brick cornice with a dog-tooth string-course. Windows are paired aluminium-framed casements—those to the first floor having transoms and those to the outer of the three central bays being single casements. The windows have square-headed openings with brick sills and pale-red rubbed brick lintels, except those on the ground floor which have stone sills and lintels formed by the raised brick panelling above. The first-floor window directly over the entrance is recessed with a pair of stone colonettes flanking an angled flagpole.

The recessed main entrance is reached via a flight of nine stone steps with a metal balustrade with timber handrails and flanked by a pair of stone columns with square bases and narrow plain capitals. The entrance consists of panelled, blue-painted, double doors in a plain opening. Above the entrance and extending over the cornice is an oversize Portland stone keystone bearing the badge of the London Scottish in relief.

The Elverton Street elevation of the front block is in the same style, of four bays with blind windows to the second bay which has an entrance in a plain opening. To the left, separated by a flat-roofed vehicular entrance to the basement with metal sliding shutters, is a lower three-storey range styled to resemble a Georgian town house. This is of two bays with simplified versions of some of the decorative elements of the main range. The ground floor has two entrances in plain brick openings, simplified rusticated brickwork and a corbelled brick cornice. The pairs of upper storey windows comprise aluminium-framed faux sash windows with rubbed brick lintels and brick sills. There is a corbelled brick cornice and the parapet has stone copings. Behind this range, the southern elevation of the drill hall is blind apart from two fire escape doors at gallery level and two pairs of narrow decorative banding of pale-red brick.

Above the parapet are the clerestory windows of the pitched, slate-clad wrought-iron roof structure. The windows consist of two tiers of triple-light timber windows in metal frames. The top tier are mechanically opened top-hung casements. The gable ends of the roof structure are fully glazed in metal frames hung from blue-painted wrought-iron trusses extending over the roof at each end.

Interior

The principal internal space is the triple-height drill hall with two tiers of white-painted wrought-iron galleries with lattice girders and H-section uprights, suspended from the exposed roof trusses and extending around all four sides. The galleries are of three bays to the sides—reduced from the five bays on the long sides of the original hall—and five shorter bays at the ends.

The lower gallery is supported on fluted brackets and has a balustrade with four panels to each bay on the sides and two panels to each bay at the ends. The panels consist of a red-painted frame with white-painted diagonal elements forming a six-pointed star, with a blue-painted rosette on the central intersection. The upper gallery balustrade is simpler with a grid of white-painted iron bars within a red-painted frame. All the balustrades have timber handrails. The H-section uprights separating the bays have four blue-painted foliate decorations to each tier and rise to volutes over the upper gallery. The roof has four trusses formed from lattice-truss rafters over arched ties with scrollwork decoration. These are connected by lattice-truss purlins with a blue-painted boarded roof.

On the ground floor of the hall, the entrance is formed of the re-erected, but altered, stone Doric portal from the original drill hall. This has new fluted pilasters, an entablature bearing the legend HEAD QUARTERS LONDON SCOTTISH RIFLE VOLUNTEERS ERECTED A.D MDCCCLXXXVI RE-ERECTED MCMLXXXVIII and a pediment containing the Coat of Arms of Scotland with the motto IN DEFENS surrounded by thistle foliage. Above the pediment is a bronze bust of the founder of the regiment, Lord Elcho, later the Earl of Wemyss and March (1818-1914) on an open Portland stone plinth.

On the other three sides of the hall are large war memorials also relocated from the original drill hall.

The Boer War Memorial

On the south side of the hall is a wall-mounted marble Boer War memorial from 1904 by the architect L A Turner of Lambs Conduit Street. This consists of a central tablet of Swiss Cipollino marble with the motto NON SIBI SED PATRIAE and a central plaque of Statuary marble from Carrara bearing the names of the 16 dead, by rank, with underneath the dedication TO THE MEMORY OF OUR COMRADES SOUTH AFRICA 1900-1902. Over the memorial plaque is a projecting canopy with a Queen Anne arch supported on Doric columns and containing a small bronze statue of Queen Victoria as Britannia, presented by her daughter Princess Louise, with the Royal Coat of Arms in relief. Below the canopy is a painted shield bearing the Scottish lion rampant surmounted by a thistle. Flanking the central tablet are narrow Statuary marble tablets containing the names of the other 200 members of the regiment who served in the Boer War.

The First World War Memorial

On the west side of the hall is a large wall-mounted wooden First World War memorial panel designed by Captain Archibald Chisholm MC, unveiled in 1923 by Field Marshal The Earl Haig. It consists of a series of wooden panels surrounding the original Portland stone fireplace. The central panel, flanked by panelled pilaster strips, bears the dedication IN MEMORY OF ALL RANKS OF THE LONDON SCOTTISH REGIMENT WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES IN THE WAR 1914-1919 over the regimental battle honours. Over this is a carving of the regimental badge set in a broken segmental pediment. On either side of the central panel, below the dentil cornice, are five tall panels bearing the names and rank of around 1,600 fallen, carved in relief and gilded. The fireplace bears evidence of the Second World War bomb damage and has a keystone inscribed with the details of the unveiling of the memorial. The memorial was renovated in 1988.

The Second World War Memorial

The Second World War memorial by Oliver Hill, on the north side of the hall, is of cream-coloured marble and was dedicated in December 1952 by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. It consists of a wall constructed of marble blocks with a concave central section topped by a painted drapery swag below which is the regimental badge in carved relief with a lapis lazuli centre and gilded lettering. The central section bears the dates 1939-1945 in Roman numerals below which are the Second World War battle honours. A recess holds a book of honour, under which is the inscription TO THE MEMORY OF ALL RANKS OF THE LONDON SCOTTISH REGIMENT WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES IN THE WAR. Beneath the inscription is a section of dark brown-coloured marble topped by a shelf. The rest of the memorial consists of six columns of the names and rank of the 383 fallen, with a carved disc motif in a recessed square at the foot of each column.

Other Interior Features

The hall dado has a series of iron ventilation grilles in the same pattern as the first-floor balustrade panels, presumably re-use of panels not required due to the shortening of the original space.

The first floor of the main range is reached via a staircase on the north of the entrance lobby with an iron balustrade and brass handrail. The lobby at the north end of the second floor has a number of wooden plaques recording the Presidents of the Sergeant's Mess relocated from the earlier drill hall.