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ROBERT ADAM & THE DEVELOPMENT OF |
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Essay by Julian.Small |
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The royal burgh of Edinburgh was founded by David I around 1130,
although such a defensible and strategically important site had been
occupied for many years previous to this date. Excavations at
Edinburgh Castle in 1988-9 demonstrated that the site had been
occupied since the Bronze Age,1
and it enters the historical record around AD 600 as Din Eidyn,
"the stronghold of Eidyn." The royal burgh was
throughout the Middle Ages one of the most important towns in
Scotland, and by the late-15th century had become the capital of the
country. Its growth throughout the Middle Ages and beyond
demonstrated its economic as well as its strategic importance.
However, the town of Edinburgh was founded on a steep-sided ridge descending eastwards from the Castle Rock, and this very constricted site resulted in a lack of building ground. Even before the end of the Middle Ages, the burgh had spread beyond the steep-sided ravine occupied today by the Cowgate to the south of the ridge on which it was founded, and into the relatively level ground beyond this. The walls which were built around the town, culminating in 1514 after the Battle of Flodden in the order to replace the town's fortifications (the so-called Flodden Wall, although this was primarily a strengthening of existing fortifications rather than new work) show the extension of its boundaries in this direction.2 To the north of the city, however, at the foot of an even steeper slope, lay the Nor' or North Loch, with a further ridge of ground running east-to-west beyond it, and this formed the boundary of the city on this side. The small and insalubrious suburb3 which grew up outside the north gate, the road to Edinburgh's port of Leith, skirting the east end of the Nor' Loch, was in itself constricted by the steep slopes of Calton Hill immediately to its north-east, and it was here, with access to the waters of the loch, that the butchers, tanners and leather-workers had their premises. Despite the open, well-drained ground beyond, sloping gently down to the Forth, nobody would have wanted to live as a neighbour to these smelly trades, or wanted to have to pick their way past such premises on their way in to the commercial centre of the town. The constricted site on which Edinburgh was built led from an early date to the division of many of the original properties, but by the sixteenth century it was becoming impractical to further sub-divide them. By this time it had started to become common to divide them horizontally into flats or "tenements". Such tenement blocks could be built up to six or seven storeys high, even as early as the late seventeenth century, as is shown by Milne's Court, built in 1690.4 Even many of the upper classes who maintained a residence in Edinburgh lived in such tenements, although in their case the tenement would be on a substantial scale. Single tenements containing twelve rooms are recorded. Such was the pressure for building space in Edinburgh, that by the eighteenth century, only the very wealthiest inhabitants would have lived in separate houses. This trend continued even during and after the construction of Edinburgh's New Town, many of the buildings of which were constructed as blocks of tenements, and is distinct from the practice in England, where it was only during the late nineteenth century that flat-dwelling became anything but exceptional, even in London, except for the poor living in single rooms in divided-up houses.5 However, it was the collapse of part of one of these tenement buildings in September 1751, resulting in at least one death,6 which was the spur for the City Council to begin a whole series of civic improvements, the greatest result of which was the development of Edinburghs New Town.
The rapid growth of Edinburgh from the middle of the eighteenth
century onwards had initially been concentrated on the south side of
the city, and with the construction of such developments as Brown's
Square in 1763 and then the laying-out of George Square in 1766, the
smartest residential areas in Edinburgh were on this side of the
city. The more spacious lay-out particularly of George Square
went along with its being constructed as individual houses rather
than tenements. George Square was a private venture by James
Brown, "a wright7
and architect," and lay outside the boundaries of the
city. Its inhabitants were not subject to the citys
taxes, one of the reasons for its popularity, and the City Council
must have wished to keep such development within areas under its own
control. Other development also went on beyond the citys
southern boundaries, for example the laying-out of Nicolson Street in 17578,
but the rural nature of the surroundings is shown by the
construction to Adam's design of the Royal
Academy for Teaching Exercises (the Edinburgh Riding School) on
Nicolson Street in 1763.
The first result of the 1753 Act was the building of a new covered merchants exchange, including a Customs House, as part of a large building, facing on to the High Street, mostly given over to shops, coffee houses, offices and residential apartments. The Lord Provost of Edinburgh, George Drummond, the prime mover behind the whole campaign of civic improvements, commissioned a design from John Adam,10 and the Trustees accepted his design but awarded the building contract to a consortium of Edinburgh tradesmen rather than to the Adams, and the design was modified before being built.11 It is unclear whether Robert, who did not depart for his Grand Tour until the following year, would have had any hand in the design of the Exchange, but it was John, the elder brother and senior partner in the firm, who probably bears principal responsibility and who took the credit. If Robert did play any part in the design, it was merely the first of many instances where he was to see his ideas modified while being executed by others. The Exchange, today called the City Chambers and used as the offices of the Edinburgh City Council, is formed around three sides of a courtyard, with a screen wall across the fourth side to the High Street. The covered exchange itself took the form of a deep loggia across the inner side of the courtyard, the ranges surrounding the open courtyard rising to four storeys in height. The next stage in the improvements, however, was critical. In what was probably the largest public works project of its generation, in 1765 work started on a bridge to link the ridge on which the city of Edinburgh was founded (the "Old Town") to the next ridge of land to the north, crossing the Nor Loch.12 The North Bridge, as it was called, was undertaken ostensibly with the purpose of improving access between the Edinburgh on its ridge and its port of Leith. However, the ulterior motive of the City Council was the development of the area to the north of the loch, much of which was in their ownership, as a new, spaciously laid-out, residential suburb, the Edinburgh New Town, within a newly-enlarged Royalty (the boundaries of the City Councils authority), the Act of Parliament extending which was passed in 1767. The new bridge, running high above the east shore of the Nor Loch (drainage of which was begun in 1759) was of three arches, and was almost 70 feet high, a massive structure, with a roadway 40 feet between the parapets. The building contract was signed in August 1765, and the bridge was opened to pedestrians early in 1769. However, part of the side-walls of the south abutment of the bridge collapsed later that year, and the bridge, which had been due to be completed by November 1769, was only finally complete in 1772. Meanwhile, the vision of Provost George Drummond was realised in the laying-out of the new suburb on the empty ground to the north of the city. In April 1766 a competition had been announced for Plans of a New Town. Six sets of proposals were submitted before the competitions closing date of 21st May 1766, and a seventh arrived late. Three months later, it was announced that of the seven sets of plans, it had been decided that the best was that prepared by James Craig, the twenty-one year old son of an Edinburgh merchant.13 How closely Craigs competition-winning design is reflected in the version that was formally adopted by the City Council in July 1767, and laid out thereafter, is unclear, since it is known that substantial revisions were made to the competition plan before its adoption. The plan which was ultimately laid out is relatively simple. It consists of three principal east-west streets, the central one connecting two formal squares, and the outer two of which are prolonged beyond the lines of the two squares. These are connected by cross-streets at regular intervals, giving a grid-iron plan. By the end of 1767, names had been assigned to the various streets and the two squares. The main street along the axis of the New Town was named George Street, in honour of the king, George III (who graciously accepted the dedication of the plan when it was published), and the two squares which it connected were St Andrews Square at the east end and St Georges Square at the west. Thus, squares named after the patron saints of Scotland and England, the two kingdoms of the United Kingdom, were symbolically linked by a street named after the king. James Craig and the Edinburgh City Councillors had demonstrated their patriotism and loyalty to the house of Hanover. The effect of this was diluted, however, when in 1785 it was decided to rename St Georges Square, Charlotte Square in honour of George IIIs wife, Queen Charlotte.
The Edinburgh New Town was intended as a purely residential
suburb. Apart from ground set aside for two churches to serve
the inhabitants, no public buildings were shown on the plan formally
adopted by the City Council in 1767 and, apart from the two "Back
Streets," as they were termed on that plan (now Thistle Street
and its extensions and Rose Street), which were intended for lower
status residents, who would service the New Town, the New Town was to
be an upper and upper-middle class refuge from the swarming streets
and crowded tenements of the old city of Edinburgh. Within a
very short while, the Councils policy changed, and on the map
of the New Town engraved and published in 1768 a small square,
labelled "Public Building," is shown on the site later
occupied by Register House.14
This site, opposite the end of the North Bridge, is an obvious one
for a large-scale building designed to attract the eye, and, in
September 1769, concluding that the siting of the intended General
Register House here "would turn out to the advantage of the
City and would promote the feuing out of the grounds on the north of
the Bridge,"15
the Council gave most of its required site to the Register House
Trustees. The Trustees commissioned Robert and James Adam to
provide designs for their new building, and although construction was
not begun until 1774, Register House was to prove a continuing
advertisement in Edinburgh for Robert Adams abilities as an architect.
Individual houses in the New Town were designed by very prominent architects. Sir William Chambers designed houses in St Andrews Square, and Robert Adam designed several houses, although only one was built in the New Town proper. This was one of the first houses to be built in Queen Street, No 8, dating from 1770-71, which was built for the judge Baron Orde.21 The house is five bays wide as opposed to the normal New Town pattern of three, but the details, particularly the doorcase, were widely imitated during the development of the New Town.
It had always been expected that the two Squares would turn out to be
the most popular locations in the New Town and so, when the time came
to consider the development of Charlotte Square, the Council decided
to try a different approach to that of the rest of the New Town.
Difficulties over ownership of part of the site, which had opened
the possibility that the New Town might have acquired a Circus or a
Crescent in order to occupy less ground, were resolved, and it was
decided that the facades of Charlotte Square should be built to a
unified design. Both Robert Kay, who was chosen as architect
for the South Bridge over Robert Adam, and James Nisbet were at
different times asked to provide designs,22
but in October 1790 the Lord Provost, James Stirling, commissioned a third
design for Charlotte Square from Robert Adam, and this was - more
or less - the one which was built.
Further new buildings on this side of Edinburgh include the last
realised design by Robert Adam for any public building. This
was the Edinburgh Bridewell.30
Expanding the jail accommodation in Edinburgh had not formed part of
George Drummonds vision for the development of the city,
although the existing House of Correction was by the 1780s in urgent
need of replacement.31
The Bridewell, the foundation stone of which was laid in Adams
presence on St Andrews Day 1791, was completed in 1795, but the
difficulties of funding public works projects during the Napoleonic
Wars meant that Adams scheme of bridging the ravine at the east
end of Princes Street, with a viaduct
carrying the road across to Calton Hill to give access to the
Bridewell and presumably connecting with the London road further to
the east, had to be abandoned until the war was over.32
The eighteenth century closed in Edinburgh with the great boom in
civic redevelopment over for the time being, choked off by the
distractions of the war with France. After the last of the
available funds were exhausted in December 1793, work on the
Edinburgh University buildings was halted,34
and it was to be 1815 before anything more then the most minimal work
was done towards its completion. Adam himself had died in March
1792, almost at the beginning of the war, and his death, together
with the abandonment of the building which he had begun with such
high hopes in 1789, is the perfect symbol of the conclusion of the
great eighteenth-century civic redevelopment of Edinburgh, which
could only begin afresh in the new, post-Napoleonic era. |
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interactive multimedia catalog
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Published
by Cadking Design Ltd, Edinburgh, Scotland - Copyright © Cadking
Design 1997-2001
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keywords: Robert Adam, architecture, Georgian Architecture, C18 architecture, urban design, visionary architecture, architectural visionary, visionary, architectural, architectural design, Development of eighteenth-century edinburgh, Edinburgh's New Town, New Town, Edinburgh, Scotland, Vision of Edinburgh, Julian Small, Sandy Kinghorn, Cadking Design Ltd, visual catalog, visual catalogues, interactive multimedia catalogue, interactive multimedia catalog, multimedia catalogue, multimedia catalogue, architecture catalogue, architecture catalog James Craig, John Adam, Robert Reid, James Nisbet, William Chambers, David Kay, Major Andrew Fraser, church design,centrally planned churches, Edinburgh University, George Drummond, Provost, Din Eidyn, Flodden Wall, North Bridge, South Bridge, Queen Street, Register House, Charlotte Square |
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