The Architecture of Robert Adam (1728-1792) Robert Adam's Castle Style - Home Page Seton Castle - Interior of the House - Ground Floor Home History of Seton Castle Seton Castle Exterior Seton Castle Interior Glossary Links Bibliography
	The plan at this level is basically divided into four areas, the entrance hall, dining room, drawing room and a bedroom with associated dressing rooms for guests. From the entrance hall, doors open into each of the other spaces and a staircase leads up to the apartments above. The dining room occupies the central space on the North side. The North End of this room is within the half cylinder drum that dominates the design of the facade externally on this side of the house. This cylindrical form extends the room and allows additional windows to be added, oriented NW and NE and therefore picking up sunrise and sunset in summer in Scotland. The design of the drawing room is perhaps the most interesting feature of the plan at this level. There are two entrances to this room, from the hall and from the dining room. Both take you through a curved tunnel-like arrangement of double door and lobby. The North and South ends of the Drawing Room are apsidal. There are doors to the circular spaces at the base of the circular turrets. Ground Floor Plan Fig 1. The House. Detail of Plan. On the South side is the entrance courtyard. A single storey corridor leads from both the East wing and West wing into the entrance hall of the main house. The corridors are curved mirroring the curved loggia on the South side of the Entrance Courtyard. Entrance Fig 2. Curved Service Corridor. This is a view looking East of the curved corridor linking the West service wing to the entrance hall. On the left is a door opening into the North garden. The sash window on the right looks into the entrance court, and externally sits in the recessed arch of a blind arcade Fig 3. Entrance Hall. This room is noted on the plan as being 20 ft square. The floor is stone flags. The door and door screen design are certainly original, the ceiling rose may be a later addition in the Adam style. The cornice is an alternating motif of ox skull with an oval geometric shape Fig 4. Front Entrance Door and Fanlight. The delicacy and exuberance of the fanlight design contrasts wonderfully with the simple geometry of the glazed element of the inner front entrance door. There also a solid panelled outer door for security. The inner door is pulled into the hall to create a deeper lobby Dining Room Fig 5. Dining Room. This room and the library above are on the North side of the house, and get little sun. In this respect the projection of the room into the half-cylinder drum on the North side helps because ot allows windows on either side oreinted NW and NE to get morning and evening sun in the summer. The rooms also take the greatest advantage possible of the views to the North, across the Firth of Forth. Fig 6. Dining Room Windows. The cornice in this room is deeper and far more ornate than in the library above. It is very unlikely that the heavy curtain rail is a feature that Adam would have approved of . It obscures the interesting detail where the heavily moulded frame, that extends around the edge of the window reveal and arch of the window head, cuts into the line of the cornice. Fig 7 Dining Room Chimney Piece. Given the precept that the more public the room he more ornate the chimney piece, it it strange that the dining room chimney piec is less ornate than the drawing room next door. Presumably the focus of the room in the drawing room in use was thought to be the table, while in the drawing room, a formal reception room, it was the hearth. Drawing Room Fig 5. Drawing Room. View of South end of room. Both ends of the room have this apse arrangement. The door on the left leads into the entrance hall, the middle door opens into the bottom of a circular turret, shown on the original plan as a WC. The corresponding room in the turret at the North end of the room is a store. Both these rooms have narrow loophole or "arrow-slit" windows Fig 5. Drawing Room. This window looks West from the Drawing Room. A common detail for Scottish sash windows is for the inner reveals of the window to splay. With a Venetian window this is not possible. Here the reveals are kept perpendicular to the line of the wall, the reveal expresses the wall thickness. Fig 5. Drawing Room Chimney Piece. The mantlepiece forms the cornice element of a mock "entablature" that forms the top part of the Carrara marble chimney piece. The entablature turns out at the point of support of the paired scroll brackets. The raised oval panel has a carving of a stag in a wreath of holly. Guest Bedroom Fig 5 Ground Floor Bedroom. This bedroom, on the ground floor, was originally probably designed and intended for guests to stay over. Since Robert Adam dined at the house when he visited he may well have stayed in this room himself. In its current poor state of repair and without furniture it looks uninviting but would not originally have been so Fig 6 Ground Floor Bedroom Chimney Piece. A simple mantle is supported on beautifully carved brackets. There is a carving in relief of a thistle within a tondo, the circular frame of which is cleverly formed from the same profile as the moulding used to frame the fireplace opening. The Fireplace has been boarded over, but the base of an elaborate cast iron grate can be seen.
	Home History of Seton Castle Seton Castle Exterior Seton Castle Interior Glossary Links Bibliography Robert Adam's Castle Style - Home Page Credits Multimedia Catalogue Catalogue Help Your Internet Browser must be set to read Java Applets to view the catalogue keywords: Robert Adam,architect,architecture,Castle Style,Seton, Castle,Country House,East Lothian,Scotland,Georgian Architecture,C18,eighteenth,century,visionary architecture,architectural visionary,visionary,Sandy Kinghorn,Cadking,visual catalogue,catalogues,NOF,RSL,SCRAN Published by Cadking Design Ltd, Edinburgh, Scotland - Copyright © Sandy Kinghorn   This project is part of the RLS (Resources for Learning in Scotland) database held by SCRAN. The full RLS database can be accessed on http://www.rls.org.uk Optimised for Internet Explorer 5 and 6 (or later) and Netscape 4.5 (or later)