Stables And Clock Tower, Culzean Castle

Culzean Castle is a castellated classical country house designed by Robert Adam and built between 1777 and 1812, with subsequent alterations and extensions carried out by Wardrop and Reid (specifically Charles Reid) between 1875 and 1879, incorporating earlier structures on the site. It is two to four storeys in height, of irregular plan, and built in polished ashlar. The castle sits dramatically on a clifftop with the estuary to the north. It features a prominent drum tower to the north and engaged round towers to the south, with battered base courses, machicolated string courses, and crenellated and machicolated parapets throughout.

THE SOUTH (GARDEN) ELEVATION

This elevation rises three storeys with a central raised attic. The thirteen-bay facade (excluding the west wing and east portico) is arranged in a tripartite pattern of 1-3-1-3-1-3-1, with single bays occupying the round towers. The central doorway is flanked by broad pilasters and rectangular windows. The ground floor outer bays have arched windows, with slit windows to the towers. At first-floor level, the three central bays have rectangular windows set within a blind arcade articulated by paired pilasters; the outer bays are arranged in a Serliana pattern, and the towers again have slit windows. At intermediate level, the towers have cruciform windows. The second floor has reduced rectangular windows. A three-bay machicolated fascia runs across the facade, with rhomboid relief panels at sill level. The attic has three bays of ocular windows flanked by pepperpot turrets. The central block is flanked by concave quadrant walls with crenellated machicolated parapets, and square gate piers to the east and west entrances with timber gates. The recessed west wing rises three storeys over a sunken basement, with six irregular bays, a polygonal projecting bay at the centre, a pedimented doorway to the right, and the elevation terminated on the left by a round corner tower with a mounted bartizan in the angle.

THE EAST ELEVATION

This elevation features an advanced three-bay, single-storey portico to the left and an advanced two-storey bow-fronted wing to the right, with a three-storey elevation behind. The portico has a round-headed central archway with a hood moulding, flanked by flat buttresses. Tripartite windows to each side are also flanked by flat buttresses. Above the moulded cornice is a plain parapet with a row of blind quatrefoils to the centre, flanked by rhomboid panels with machicolated guttae, and rhomboid relief panels at the parapet ends. The rear elevation behind the portico is three storeys and five bays, including single-bay engaged round towers at each end, with a blind arch on paired pilasters at first-floor level, rectangular windows with slit windows to the tower, and cruciform windows at intermediate floor level. The bow-fronted wing has pilaster strips between bays, fenestration set within a full-height blind arcade, and arched windows to the upper floor beneath a crenellated machicolated parapet. The rear elevation of this wing has a Diocletian window at upper level and a crenellated machicolated parapet flanked by pepperpot turrets.

THE NORTH ELEVATION

The north elevation comprises a three-storey central block of eight bays (arranged 1-5-1-1), a lowered three-storey east wing of four bays, and a lowered stepped four-storey west wing of six irregular bays. The central drum tower has a battered base and a conical roof; its lower storey has rectangular windows set within deep apertures of an arcade, and the upper part of the tower is set back behind a balustrade. At first-floor level there are rectangular windows set within a blind arcade, and the upper floor has alternating rectangular and arched windows beneath a machicolated parapet. The fenestration to each side of the drum tower is set within a full-height blind arch, with a Serliana arrangement at first-floor level, and a machicolated crenellated parapet with pepperpot corner towers above. The west wing consists of a cluster of towers: a two-stage drum tower to the left, an angled square tower to the centre, and a round tower to the right, all with irregular fenestration and crenellated machicolated parapets with pepperpot turrets.

THE WEST ELEVATION

Three storeys and a basement to the foreground, with three storeys to the rear. The foreground elevation has three bays of irregular fenestration with a round tower to the right, a crenellated machicolated parapet, and dummy cannon waterspouts. The rear elevation has seven bays including engaged round towers with slit windows, rectangular windows, and a French window second from the left, beneath a crenellated machicolated parapet.

GENERAL EXTERNAL FEATURES

Windows throughout are multi-paned, set in timber sash and case frames. Roofs are grey slate, mainly concealed behind the parapets. The west wing has stacks with multiple polygonal shafts and some single shafts; the main block has corniced stacks with cans.

INTERIOR

The interior retains Robert Adam's 18th century neoclassical decorative scheme, featuring tinted plaster ceilings and friezes and carved classical chimney-pieces, executed in phases between the late 1770s and around 1820. The 1870s works by Wardrop and Reid introduced a matching Adam Revival style of refurbishment, re-using original fixtures and fittings in new locations. A 1870s Nursery Wing survives with plain fittings and simple mouldings, though much altered in a 20th century conversion into flats.

The main block is arranged as suites of adjoining rooms around a central oval staircase lit by a cupola, with a circular room in the drum tower to the north on each floor, and turnpike service stairs in the corner towers. A 19th century open-well stone service stair connects to the west wing at ground and second floors.

Ground Floor

The Portico (19th century) has offices to the right and a distyle Ionic screen leading to a lobby on the left. Fittings here include a white marble Adam-style chimney-piece, hardwood panelled doors, two painted and glazed 18th century timber bookcases in niches to the left, a flagstone floor, and glazed panelled double doors with a fanlight leading to the Armoury. The Armoury is a 19th century reconfiguration of Adam's original hall and buffet, featuring a distyle Doric screen to the left, tripartite arched window embrasures, and a grey stone chimney-piece in the style of a classical entablature with fluted pilasters. The Old Eating Room is an 18th century Robert Adam renovation of earlier rooms, apsidal to east and west, with a neoclassical ceiling of circular patterns bearing chimera in relief panels and three painted roundels by Antonio Zucchi. The plain cornice has an urn and garland motif repeated on the doorcases. The chimney-piece is grey marble in the form of a corniced entablature with urn and garland frieze. Hardwood panelled doors and French windows to the garden on the south complete the room. The Dining Room was formerly a library and dressing room, altered in 1877. It has a distyle Corinthian screen to the north, a neoclassical plaster ceiling with bucranium frieze, a white marble carved chimney-piece with urn and garland frieze, and hardwood panelled doors. The Stairwell, dating from 1787, is oval in plan with an ambulatory around an arcade carried on square piers with Doric capitals; the centre arches are blocked on the north, closing off the north approach flight. The iron balustrade has an urn and lyre pattern, and the floor is flagstone. The Exhibition Room to the north has a quadripartite vaulted ceiling, two stone chimney-pieces with plain moulded surrounds, and painted panelled timber doors and window shutters. The Kitchen to the northwest is double height with a clerestorey, apsidal to the east with a stone warming range in the apse, an iron cooking range to the west, and an arched stone hearth to the northwest. The adjoining scullery has a quadripartite vault and an iron cooking range to the west.

First Floor

The oval stair landing has Corinthian columns supporting the staircase and a distyle Corinthian screen to the north. The Round Drawing Room (Saloon) to the north was completed in 1820 and features a tinted plaster ceiling by Robert Adam in a wheel pattern with gryphons and pedestals, full-length windows to the north, two arched niches to the south, and a carved marble classical chimney-piece with paired winged seahorses and boys on dolphins to the frieze. The Earl's Bedroom and Dressing Room to the east has a green and cream chimney-piece with an entablature supported on caryatids, a laurel wreath pattern frieze, and a studded iron inset. The Blue Drawing Room to the southeast has a tinted plaster ceiling with a painted roundel of a mythological scene by Antonio Zucchi at the centre, and a carved marble chimney-piece with a relief frieze of mythological creatures and Mannerist pilasters. The Picture Room at the centre of the south front occupies what was originally the great hall of the castle and is now mainly 18th century in decoration, with a tinted plaster ceiling in a geometric pattern, a carved marble chimney-piece with a relief panel of chimera to the frieze and Mannerist pilasters, and hardwood panelled doors. The Best Bedroom and Cradle Room are 18th and 19th century in character, with plain ceilings, a palmette frieze, a carved marble fireplace with bucranium frieze and a panel with a classical scene, a later 19th century bathtub with mahogany fittings, and hardwood panelled doors. The Exhibition Rooms to this floor are 18th and 19th century, with a Serlian window with panelled embrasures to the north, tinted garlanded friezes, plain wainscotting, and carved chimney-pieces with urns, garlands, and gryphons.

Second Floor (Eisenhower Apartments)

Dating from the 18th and 19th centuries but with mid-20th century alterations for conversion to a flat, including a new kitchen and laundry. The oval stair landing has Ionic columns. The Drawing Room is a circular room with a plain cornice and two carved chimney-pieces in the form of classical entablatures, with painted panelled timber doors and window shutters. Private bedrooms were not inspected at the time of the survey. A partial attic to the south (the Cairncross Suite and Adam Suite) was also not inspected.

West Wing

Originally the Nursery Wing and now self-contained flats. The wing is later 19th century in origin with mid and late 20th century alterations. It retains painted panelled timber doors and a staircase with a timber balustrade. The basement Brewhouse Flat retains 18th century features including plain stone chimney-pieces, a lounge with a quadripartite vault, and a cellar with wine racks.

HISTORICAL AND ARCHITECTURAL CONTEXT

Together with the outstanding ornamental landscape of its estate, Culzean Castle is acknowledged as the epitome of the Picturesque movement in Scotland and is a work of international importance. While many theorists of the Picturesque stressed informality in architectural composition and landscaping as opposed to the dominant trend of neoclassicism, Culzean manages to combine formally ordered features with fanciful and implausible elements, as well as genuine ancient fragments. The dramatic clifftop site lent itself particularly well to this approach, evoking notions of the sublime power of nature that underpinned the Romantic sensibility.

Although several architects contributed to the clifftop ensemble, including later 19th century additions, the castle, together with the Stable Court and Home Farm, form an essential part of Robert Adam's body of work. Adam built or rebuilt twelve country houses in the castellated style, ten of which were in Scotland, perhaps reflecting a national preoccupation. Each castellated house combined slightly different features: Caldwell House (1771) in Renfrewshire had crenellation and pepperpot turrets; Oxenfoord (1780) had round towers and crenellation; Mellerstain was regular in elevation with a crenellated parapet. At Culzean, Adam deployed the full vocabulary. The south facade demonstrates the architect transforming a well-ordered classical composition into a whimsical Mannerist castle. The round towers function like giant-order columns, their cyclopean arrow slits serving as windows. The dentilled cornices and string courses reveal themselves on closer inspection as dummy machicolation. This allowed the effortless application of pilasters and Serliana, though the latter is itself a deceit, relying on dummy windows. As at Drumlanrig, the pepperpot turrets allude to the ancient building at the castle's core. The north side, looking over the Clyde Estuary, is by contrast asymmetrical and less regular, seemingly inspired by Claude Lorraine and Salvator Rosa, allowing the architect to create in stone the Romantic fantasy of his landscape drawings.

Commissioned by the 10th Earl of Cassillis in 1776, Adam was presented with an L-plan tower house with various extensions and detached offices, including a kitchen block on the northeast built for the 9th Earl in 1766. The tower was regularised, the kitchen wing absorbed, and extensions made to the north and northwest. Adam's transformation was achieved in a number of stages and appears to have only been finally completed by the 12th Earl in the second decade of the 19th century, by which time both the original patron and the architect were dead.

In 1877 the 3rd Marquess of Ailsa initiated an ambitious scheme of internal alterations, refurbishment, and extension, engaging the Edinburgh architects Wardrop and Reid and decorators Jackson and Sons of London and Bonar and Carfrae of Edinburgh. A new three-storey nursery wing was built on the west, replacing the former brewhouse wing of which only the lower storeys were retained, and a new porch was added to the east side, enlarging the entrance hall and providing new offices. The former buffet room and dining room were opened into each other to form a new sitting room, while Adam's library and a former dressing room were combined to create a larger dining room with French windows added to the garden terrace. Great care was taken to ensure the new rooms matched the Adam interiors, with various fixtures and fittings re-used in new locations. Adam's later north range with its circular rooms was largely left intact, as was the spectacular elliptical staircase of 1788 to 1812, the culmination of Adam's work at the castle. The Wardrop and Reid exteriors borrowed features from Adam's design — such as the crenellated machicolated parapet and the replication of the glazing — but are clearly works of Victorian taste, incorporating Baronial elements such as corbelled bartizans and canted bays that Adam had eschewed.

After the castle and policies passed from the 5th Marquess to the National Trust for Scotland in 1945, a visitor apartment was created for General Eisenhower on the upper floor. Various schemes of internal redecoration followed, and in the 1960s the west wing was converted into flats for letting. No external alterations have been made since the 19th century, and the building has benefitted from extensive stone restoration.

Culzean, at one time the largest estate in Ayrshire, has been associated with the Kennedy family since the Middle Ages. It was gifted by Gilbert the 4th Earl of Cassillis to his brother Thomas Kennedy in 1569. In the 1660s the barmekin around the tower house was breached to create terraced gardens, orchards, and a walled garden for which Culzean was notable, while the caves beneath the castle (now a scheduled monument) were fortified as secure stores. Culzean became the principal family seat when Sir Thomas Kennedy (1726–75) became the 9th Earl of Cassillis in 1759. A continuing programme of improvements was undertaken by Sir Thomas and his successors during the 18th and 19th centuries. The 10th Earl began the rebuilding to Adam's designs. Work was continued by Archibald (1770–1846), the 12th Earl and later 1st Marquess of Ailsa, who from around 1810 commissioned numerous practical and ornamental structures and engaged several important architects and landscape designers to embellish the gardens and grounds with ponds, gates, lodges, and pavilions, resulting in several key works of the Picturesque era. The 3rd Marquess undertook the modernisation and enlargement of the castle in the 1870s. In 1945 the 5th Marquess divided the property, making over the castle and its immediate policies to the National Trust for Scotland.

Robert Adam (1728–1792) was one of the most prominent architects of his generation and for a time the most fashionable architect in Britain. He helped usher in the neoclassical taste that superseded Palladianism and created a refined style of interior design that came to bear his name. His castellated mansions set in Romantic landscapes, such as Culzean and Seton, helped define the Picturesque movement and strongly influenced the design of Scottish country houses in the first half of the 19th century. With his family firm he undertook most types of architectural work, though large public commissions such as Register House and Edinburgh University came only towards the end of his career.

Wardrop and Reid was a continuation of the Brown and Wardrop partnership, which came into existence when Thomas Brown died and chief draughtsman Charles Reid was assumed into partnership in 1873. When Reid died in 1883, the practice merged with that of Rowand Anderson. James Maitland Wardrop (1824–82) had extensive contacts with the landed gentry, which brought much work building, remodelling, and extending country houses in a number of styles including French and Scots, and he also pioneered a Georgian revival. The firm held a contract with the British Linen Bank and designed numerous county court buildings. Wardrop's sons Harry and Hew were involved with the practice during the 1870s and 1880s. Charles Reid was personally responsible for the new wing, porch, and alterations at Culzean Castle.

Culzean Castle forms part of an A-listed group within the Culzean Castle Estate, which also includes the Castle Walls, Fountain Court, Ruined Arch and Viaduct, Stable Block, Camellia House, Cat Gates, Home Farm, Powder House, Ardlochan Lodge, Dolphin House, Hoolity Ha', Swan Pond Complex, Swan Pond Ice House, Walled Garden, Bathing Complex, Water Works, Shore Boat House, Battery and Mast House, Main Drive Walls and Piers, and Gas Works. The list description was revised as part of the Culzean Castle Estate Review of 2010 to 2011.