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Seton Castle and it's Brief History
Robert Adam was commissioned to design Seton Castle in the summer of 1789. By
December the design was at the stage of working drawings. The building contract
was awarded to the builder Thomas Russell (later to build Airthrie Castle,
another Adam design and now part of Stirling University campus). The building
was constructed between 12 November 1789 and the summer of 1791. Robert Adam, on
his last visit to Scotland before his death, dined with his client in the new
house on 11 June 1791.
The site for the castle, in East Lothian a few miles South of Edinburgh, was beside that of the old Seton Palace, a vast old courtyard house, the owners of which, the Earls of Wintoun, had had their estates confiscated after the 1715 rebellion. By the 1790's the Palace was a ruin, and the site in the hands of Lt Col Alexander Mackenzie of the 21st Dragoons, eldest son of Alexander MacKenzie of Portmore, Peebleshire. He was a young man, in his early twenties, when he commissioned the design from Adam. He would not live long to enjoy his new house. According to a local tradition he had evicted an old woman who lived in a cottage on the estate near Seton Palace. She laid a curse on him and prophesied, as her house was demolished, that the new Seton Castle would never become his family home. He died five years later in 1796.
John Patterson, Robert Adam's Clerk of Works in Scotland, (later to become a competent architect in his own right) reported to Adam in a letter of 26 April 1790 that the old building had been demolished and cleared.
For a client one of the advantages of a building designed in
the Castle Style was the reduced cost of constructing the stone walls which (as
in this case) could be generally of undressed coursed or "drove" stone (with
chisel marks on the surface). Dressed (smooth faced) and carved stone were only
used for sting courses and the fine detailing, such as the bartizans and
machiciolation at the battlements. Of course the demolition of Seton Palace
provided a ready suppy of stone and extensive use was made of this.
This building is in a fairly exposed location and in many areas the mortar
joints badly need repointing, but also much of the stone is heavily weathered.
One of the reasons for the degree of weathering may be that much of the stone,
borrowed from Seton Palace, may have originally been cut centuries before the
current house was built.
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The Seton
House Castle, East Lothian, Scotland, UK, c/o Gordon Lockhart, Telephone
+44 795 832 2611. |