A Modernist residence created in the course of the Nineteen Sixties throughout the walled backyard of a historic home stylishly blends the up to date and the historic. Mary Miers stories; pictures by Paul Highnam for Nation Life.
Cloistered within the walled backyard at Leuchie close to North Berwick — the house of Sir Hew and Girl Dalrymple and household — is one in all an fascinating clutch of Mid-Century Trendy designs that had been built-in into the backyard buildings of a historic home. The group, which incorporates Trevor Dannatt’s Pitcorthie in Fife of 1968, the walled backyard homes at Hurley, Berkshire (Walter Goddard, 1956) and in Henley-on-Thames (Francis Pollen,1959), and Pollen’s 1976 Lake Home on The Grange property in Hampshire, drew inspiration from vernacular sources, mixing pure and manufactured supplies in unpretentious, rigorously crafted designs.
Leuchie Walled Backyard and its Georgian predecessor (Leuchie Home, at this time a respite residence) had been described by Mark Girouard in two articles printed the 12 months after the Trendy home was constructed (Nation Life, October 12 and 26, 1961). Six many years later, the story has been enriched in a number of methods: the architect Sir James Dunbar-Nasmith not too long ago shared recollections of the fee, his first main home undertaking, and final 12 months, Robert Dalrymple printed an affectionate account of rising up right here within the Nineteen Sixties. In 2020, Grey Macpherson Architects accomplished a delicate remodelling in collaboration with the current homeowners, Sir Hew Dalrymple, and his spouse, Janey, who has up to date the interiors to swimsuit the home’s new function as a trendy vacation let. With this new chapter within the story of Leuchie, it appeared well timed to revisit.
Fig 1: The corridor with a portrait of the 4th Baronet (1774–1834), attributed to Sir William Beechey, set into panelling modelled on a Nineteen Fifties design for Turnhouse Airport. Leuchie Walled Backyard, East Lothian. ©Paul Highnam for Nation Life.
The Dalrymples have been linked with North Berwick since 1694, when Hew Dalrymple (1652–1737), scion of a robust authorized and political household, purchased land right here, flush together with his success as a lawyer. In 1698, the 12 months he succeeded his father, the first Viscount Stair, as Lord President of the Courtroom of Session, he was created a baronet. Over the following few many years, he enlarged his property to three,000 acres, shopping for up the lands of Tantallon and Leuchie, in addition to the Bass Rock, which he united beneath the brand new Barony of North Berwick.
Leuchie Home dates from 1779–85 and was constructed by the 2nd Baronet, who had inherited from his grandfather in 1737. Having been an MP principally based mostly in London, by the 1770s, the second Sir Hew was in his sixties and spending extra time in East Lothian, planting his acres and having fun with rural pursuits. As he wrote to a buddy, the sooner home was rotten and he resolved to tug it down and construct ‘an honest habitation appropriate to my beginning rank and fortune’. The end result was a sensible nation home, a drawing of which is prominently displayed in his portrait by David Martin of 1789. He died the next 12 months and his son, the third Sir Hew, added Hamilton to his surname on inheriting Bargany in Ayrshire in 1796.
Fig 2: The home is constructed in opposition to the previous backyard wall. The pediment-like construction conceals the roof of the gardener’s cottage. Leuchie Walled Backyard, East Lothian. ©Paul Highnam for Nation Life.
By the Twenties, the Melancholy and loss of life duties had taken their toll and far of the property needed to be bought. By the point the ninth Baronet died, in 1959, the home, which had acquired substantial Victorian additions, appeared an impractical residence for both his widow or their son. The tenth Sir Hew was within the military and had already been searching for someplace appropriate on the property for household holidays. When he and his spouse took Sir James to see the 18th-century walled backyard, the architect was ‘shocked’.
The five-acre enclosure is split by a longitudinal wall — to the south lies the bigger vegetable backyard; to its north, the pleasure backyard, lined with previous fruit bushes and with a sheltered, west-facing website. The brand new home was accomplished in 1960 and, two years later, it turned the couple’s everlasting residence when Sir Hew returned residence and joined Scottish & Newcastle Breweries.
Sir James was then a rising star from the workplace of Sir Robert Matthew who, together with his colleague Graham Regulation, had not too long ago arrange Regulation & Dunbar-Nasmith Architects (at this time, LDN Architects), which might develop into one in all Scotland’s main practices, greatest identified for its up to date theatre buildings and conservation work. Now retired aged 95, he clearly remembers that Leuchie was Job 14 and one in all his happiest commissions.
Fig 3: The terrace with a bust by Thomas Campbell of Jane Duncan, spouse of the 4th Sir Hew, who rebuilt the walled backyard in 1809. Leuchie Walled Backyard, East Lothian. ©Paul Highnam for Nation Life.
The success of the undertaking owed a lot to the belief and non-interference of his purchasers. Having made it clear that they supposed to fill their new residence with the inherited work and furnishings from Leuchie Home, they’d just one request: they needed it to be a ‘actually trendy home’. This, as their son Robert would later mirror, ‘appears at odds with the traditionalists we knew’.
Key to the design was the backyard wall, remodelled in about 1809, allegedly by Napoleonic prisoners-of-war. ‘I used to be anxious to restrict something I did to the historic construction to an absolute minimal,’ the architect stresses. The principle backyard vary is enclosed on three sides by the previous partitions, the east part — with three holes punched by — serving as a backbone that separates the home’s two very totally different faces. There are not any splayed wings or bowed ends, as Sir James’s hero Basil Spence might need proposed in a nod to Georgian Leuchie. As an alternative, the modestly scaled home consists of low-slung, horizontal bins, their glossy glass and white-rendered partitions set in opposition to the weathered brickwork in a manner that also feels daring. ‘A flat roof tells you completely nothing in regards to the dimension of a home when considered from a distance,’ Sir James observes of the cover that oversails the central part and a part of the decrease wings. The flatness of the home, he explains, was dictated by the present flat-topped gable that sweeps as much as conceal the gardener’s cottage abutting on the opposite aspect (Fig 2).
Fig 4: A floating bookcase throughout the drawing room’s west wall. Leuchie Walled Backyard, East Lothian. ©Paul Highnam for Nation Life.
Relationship from the 18th century, the cottage turned the kitchen/nursery wing, its little-altered exterior setting the understated tone of the doorway entrance. Solely on passing by the entrance door pierced into the backyard wall to its south is the Trendy vary revealed.
The inside balances previous and new in equally stunning methods. The place different homes of the interval had been open plan and sparely furnished with Continental Trendy furnishings, Leuchie mirrored its homeowners’ conventional way of life in conventionally designated rooms full of inherited possessions. But, there is no such thing as a feeling of being closed in. The insertion of a clerestorey above the partitions dividing the primary rooms permits the boarded ceiling to be seen as a steady airplane working by the enfilade, unifying the areas.
The drawing room occupies the total depth of the home, its metal and marble fire set into the backyard wall to share the cottage chimney. It isn’t a big room, however the transparency of the backyard entrance makes it really feel spacious and floods it with gentle. Creative particulars embrace the floating bookcase that runs throughout the west window, concealing air flow strips set right into a corresponding timber transom (Fig 4).
The entrance wall of the unique eating room is about again beneath the roof cover to type that requisite of Mid-Century Trendy homes, the ‘outside room’ (Fig 3). To its north, a considerably sunless open terrace with a pergola continued the interaction of indoor and outside areas, balancing the strong and clear modules with a void. As a part of latest alterations, the room has been prolonged over the again half of the terrace to create a up to date kitchen/front room (Fig 8).
Fig 5: The previous eating room has been prolonged to create a spacious kitchen/front room. The woman within the 1730s portrait is unidentified. Leuchie Walled Backyard, East Lothian. ©Paul Highnam for Nation Life.
The brand new addition is a horizontal white field, rigorously designed to counterbalance the south vary, the place bedrooms, bogs and storage cabinets open off a top-lit passage. In 1964, with a fourth youngster on the best way, Girl Anne-Louise Hamilton-Dalrymple requested Sir James to plot a plan for 2 extra bedrooms. The ensuing extension types a mezzanine on the south finish, preserving a pedestrian route as a lined manner. Internally, it’s reached by a brief stair that ingeniously lifts as much as enable entry to storage under (Fig 6).
Sir James’s curiosity within the high quality and really feel of supplies is clear in lots of his buildings, the place timber is used creatively inside and outside. At Leuchie, spruce ceilings, plywood fitted cabinets, ribbed doorways and partitions of beech and mahogany, in addition to muninga parquet flooring, lend heat and contrasts of texture and color. The corridor panelling — a secret-nailed tongue-and-groove with a particular double curvature — was modelled on the design for Edinburgh’s Turnhouse Airport, the place Sir James was undertaking architect when working for Matthew within the Nineteen Fifties.
Fig 6: The bed room passage to the 1965 mezzanine extension. The quick staircase within the distance will be lifted up like a drawbridge, revealing storage under. Leuchie Walled Backyard, East Lothian. ©Paul Highnam for Nation Life.
As Nation Life articles of the interval illustrate, it was common for the interiors of Modernist homes to be furnished with antiques. Few, nonetheless, incorporate historic portraiture with the bravado of Leuchie. When it turned clear that there was no hope of the partitions being tall sufficient to hold the images, the canvases had been merely faraway from their frames and constructed into the structure. Probably the most spectacular — a full-height 4th Baronet standing in scarlet uniform in opposition to a moody sky — makes a grand impression on arrival, a dramatically over-scaled presence within the small, sq. corridor (Fig 1). Elsewhere, three-quarter-length portraits, a few of married {couples} inset as pairs, add richness to the primary rooms.
In her latest e book The See-By means of Home (2020), Shelley Klein tells the story of the Modernist home close to Selkirk that Peter Womersley in-built 1957 in collaboration along with her textile-designer father Bernat Klein. She describes how rising up at Excessive Sunderland was like dwelling in a murals and explores the impact that her father’s uncompromising aesthetic had on her childhood. This acclaimed memoir impressed Robert Dalrymple to mirror on his personal upbringing in a ‘flat-roofed bungalow’. As his booklet Outdated Methods in a New Home reveals, the expertise was moderately totally different. His dad and mom might have been ‘surprisingly receptive’ to the thought of Modernism, however their enter into the design was minimal and the country-house regime and furnishings they imported into their progressive new residence remained resolutely old style.
Fig 7: The brand new eating room within the former nursery, with Isabel Reid’s carved newel submit. Leuchie Walled Backyard, East Lothian. ©Paul Highnam for Nation Life.
They weren’t uncommon, nonetheless, in making a separate zone for the youngsters and nanny — it’s a stunning characteristic of Modernist homes that the ideas of open planning had been typically relaxed on this regard. At Leuchie, the backyard wall was successfully the inexperienced baize door — in addition to a sound barrier — between adults and kids. Remodelled to accommodate a eating room (Fig 7), the cottage remembers former days within the figures of boys carved into the staircase newel submit by sculptor Isabel Reid. It was right here, ‘the place no central heating was deemed obligatory’, that Nanny, now aged 96, presided over the glad nursery routine.
After the brothers left residence — Hew for a profession in trade, Jock to develop into a priest, Robert a e book designer, William a historian and author — the home remained unchanged. When their dad and mom died in 2017 and 2018, it nonetheless had the central heating and servicing that had revolutionised their life within the Nineteen Sixties.
Fig 8: The brand new kitchen within the former eating room. The portraits are of Sir Hew, Lord Drummore, after Allan Ramsay, and his spouse, Anne Horn, painted by John Medina. Leuchie Walled Backyard, East Lothian. ©Paul Highnam for Nation Life.
The current homeowners, who’ve lived at close by Blackdykes since 1992 (Nation Life, January 11, 2007), noticed the letting potential of Leuchie Walled Backyard and set a couple of cautious renovation. They’ve newly rendered, painted and embellished inside and outside, changed all of the infrastructure, created new bogs and reconfigured parts of the plan. With out destroying the spirit of the interiors, Girl Dalrymple has skilfully used color to introduce selection and definition — a Modernist precept missing within the unique scheme (Fig 5), which was white all through ‘in order to not detract from the work’. She has additionally redesigned a lot of the backyard.
The snug mix of previous and new that has been a defining attribute of the home since 1960 is a testomony to the flexibility of a mode too typically thought-about unhomely. It’s truthful to say that not all homes of the interval have stood the check of time, owing to poor design or workmanship, however the reverse is true of Leuchie. The latest renovation has demonstrated the distinctive high quality of this little-known instance of Scottish Modernism and it’s good that it may now be extra extensively loved.
Go to www.leuchiewalledgarden.com for extra particulars and visiting occasions.
Credit score: Tim Graham/Getty Photographs
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