Walled Garden, Brodick Castle, Arran

Walled Garden (The Nursery), Brodick Castle, Arran

This is a four-acre, four-sided irregular walled enclosure dating from 1769, which served as a nursery providing saplings for timber afforestation and ornamental varieties for the pleasure grounds of Brodick Castle Estate. The walls are constructed of pink sandstone rubble with slab coping. The south wall, facing the coastal road, has its upper two courses of squared rubble. The west wall is breached and patched in places, partly integral to the gable of an adjacent sawmill and the east wall of the gardener's cottage on the southwest corner. The north wall contains a vehicle aperture midway along its length and is integral to three ancillary lean-to structures built against its exterior. The east wall features an entrance with timber gates providing access to the castle's western entrance drive. At the southwest corner, there is a cottage garden on the outside of the wall, with a lower south wall of boulder coping, a timber gate, and squared stone piers with pyramidal copes. Along the north side, dwarf walls of sandstone rubble enclose raised beds formerly used in association with glasshouses.

A tree nursery appears to have existed on the site by the time the enclosing wall was built. A further nursery area lay outside the wall to the northeast. The nursery is believed to have taken over the role of kitchen garden when the Walled Garden below the castle was converted to pleasure grounds in the mid-19th century. At the 1864 Ordnance Survey, the northeast quarter was still in use as a tree nursery. The west wall was breached in the 1950s to allow vehicle access to the sawmill and has not been rebuilt. A large glasshouse, known as the Buchanan Glasshouse, was brought from Buchanan Castle in 1948, using the same dwarf wall base courses. In 1958 this large glasshouse was heated by electricity and eight smaller greenhouses were heated by a single coke-burning boiler, since removed. The large glasshouse itself was removed in the 1980s.

Bothy and Office

A 19th-century lean-to building of random rubble with ashlar quoins, roofed with slate and three skylights. The east gable has a vertically boarded timber door. The interior has painted stone walls, plasterboard walls, a stud partition with hollow door, an early 21st-century kitchen sink and units, a plasterboard ceiling, and a concrete screed floor.

Boiler House

A 19th-century semi-submerged monopitch structure of random rubble and rendered brick with a corrugated iron roof. A square brick stack with ceramic cap rises from the roof. Stone steps descend to the entrance on the east side, set between stone retaining walls. The interior has timber rafters, rubble walls with remains of rendering, and a square brick flue on a concrete base.

Chemical Store

A lean-to building of circa 1930 constructed of rendered brick, with two vertically boarded timber doors and timber sash and case windows. The interior contains lavatories and storage space.

Gardener's Cottage

A mid-19th-century single-storey rectangular-plan cottage adjoining the external wall of the garden at the southwest corner. It is built of stugged pink sandstone rubble with ashlar dressings, the rear wall being formed by the garden wall itself. A rendered lean-to bathroom extension extends to the east and a vestibule extension to the west, with a timber lean-to shed to the south. The roof is of grey slates in a piend form, with a ridge stack. The windows are multi-pane timber sash and case type, with hopper windows to the extensions. The door is timber. The eaves have brackets. Rainwater goods are cast iron. The northwest angle is splayed.

The interior has plaster walls. The vertically boarded timber door to the main room is of recent construction. Elsewhere, doors are of hollow timber. Few original features remain, though some timber skirtings, architraves, and panelling in window embrasures survive.

Historical Context

Brodick Castle Estate was originally the nucleus of the Lands of Arran. Following its role in the Scottish War of Independence, it was transformed into an Earldom and granted to James Hamilton by his cousin, King James IV, in 1503. The Isle of Arran remained one of the minor estates of the Dukes of Hamilton until the late 19th century. Agricultural improvements in the 18th century, culminating in clearances in the early 19th century, eventually displaced small-scale subsistence farming on the island. In the mid-19th century, improved transportation made Brodick an attractive picturesque resort and hunting destination for the Hamiltons, and the castle was substantially rebuilt with its surrounding area laid out as gardens and pleasure grounds. On the death of the 12th Duke in 1895, Brodick passed to the future Duchess of Montrose. In 1957 the castle and immediately surrounding policies were conveyed to the National Trust for Scotland.

The Nursery forms part of a group listing at Brodick Castle Estate, which includes Brodick Castle, the Bavarian Summerhouse, Cnocan Burn Road Bridge, Greenhyde and Castle Cottages, the Ice House, the main Walled Garden, the Nursery, the Main Gates, West Gates, Coastal Boundary Walls, South Gates, and Sylvania and Brodick Kennels.

Modern additions to the Nursery include Shore Lodge, a single-storey hostel accommodation with pitched roofs on an E-plan, built in 2000 and screened by hedges; a New Tractor Shed, a recent timber-clad structure with pitched roof in the northeast corner; recent metal-framed greenhouses; a timber-framed greenhouse of circa 1930; and several ad-hoc structures.