The quality of Scottish architecture great and small has rarely been better chronicled than in the latest Pevsner architecture guide devoted to Dundee and Angus and written by the tireless John Gifford, author of four previous volumes in the series and co-author of two more. Gifford is a master of pithy descriptions as he points to the candle-snuffer turrets, bartizans, cannon spouts, turnpike stairs and crowstepped gables of compact 16th-century tower houses and 19th-century Scottish Baronial mansions.
The book is also a hymn to Scottish Greek Revival architecture, whether the noble Greek Doric temple front of Dundee High School or the Hawksmoor-like Roman Doric of the City’s Sheriff Court. In the town of Montrose they chose Ionic for the elegant Adamesque Academy and the Museum.
Two of the grandest Grecian country houses illustrated survived thanks to hospital use. The first is Camperdown House of 1826 by the fertile and prolific William Burn and an unashamed crib of The Grange in Hampshire. This was built by the 2nd Viscount Duncan and named in honour of his father’s sweeping victory over Dutch fleet at the battle of Camperduin in 1797. Stracathro House with tall Corinthian columns of 1827 was built for Alexander Cruikshank who had made a fortune in Jamaica. This was sold to become a family home in 2003.
Gifford’s 738 pages include restored L plan tower houses like 15th-century Inverquharity Castle and Hatton Castle on a Z-plan dating from 1575, unroofed c.1720 and restored in the 1980s. For dazzling show no tower house exceeds Glamis Catle with its fairy-tale array of tower and turrets and magnificent plasterwork.
The House of Dun, by William Adam is the finest 18th century mansion in Angus with vista from the front door to the garden door, and view over Montrose Basin and façade inset with full triumphal arch.
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Dundee boasts Georgian planned suburbs and an unequalled concentration of major Victorian commercial architecture including banks and insurance companies, linen and jute mills.
Broughty Ferry is a small fishing settlement which became a summer bathing resort for Dundonians. Many of the villas built in the years up to the First World War have gone, including Carbet Castle, the huge Victorian mansion of textile manufacturer Joseph Grimond demolished in the 1920s, but white-harled Fort William survives, built in 1839 for Captain James Neish.
Gifford points to a group of unexpectedly smart rural churches each resulting from the determination of the chief landowner in the parish including light-hearted Gothick oat Lochlee (now Glenlee) and Pitarrow church by the accomplished James Playfair. Gifford gives a bigger showing to contemporary architecture than in previous volumes, including Frank Gehry’s Maggie Centre at Dundee with a roof of pleated stainless steel and “a beautifully finished interior”. Next stop is the proposed Dundee V&A Gallery likened to a pair of ingeniously slatted conjoined ships’ hulls due for completion in 2014. Dundee, now affirming itself as a ”City of Discovery” can take pride in this volume and must be less careless of its historic buildings than in the past.
The Buildings of Scotland — Dundee and Angus by John Gifford (Yale University Press, £35)