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May 2016
Dear Friends, Supporters and Colleagues
Welcome to the SCT May e-bulletin.
In the run up to yesterday's election, SCT was keen to gauge where parties stood on matters concerning the built and historic environment, having put together our own Six Point Action Plan for the next Scottish Government. We attended a hustings organised by BEFS, ICE, RIAS, RICS and RTPI Scotland. Questions were wide-ranging, covering everything from accountability in the planning process to insulation. Today, as the results come in from the Scottish Parliamentary elections, take a moment to see where each party stands regarding the built and historic environment.
But it hasn't all been about politics. Last week, the SCT was visited by a couple with a story to tell surrounding a piano which was once housed in the Tobacco Merchant's House. Read more of this fascinating story below.
As ever, if any group would like me or John Pelan, SCT Director, to meet with them or give a talk then please give us a call or drop us an email.
Gaby Laing, Heritage Officer
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LAST CHANCE! My Place Exhibition - The Lighthouse
The My Place Exhibition is free and open to the public. It showcases the winning photographs of the My Place Photography Competition, as well as all the nominated projects and people for the My Place Awards and Civic Champion award.
The exhibition is expected to run until June 2016.
Level 2
The Lighthouse
Mitchell Lane
Glasgow
www.thelighthouse.co.uk
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The curious case of Mrs Findlay's Broadwood Square Piano
What has a piano got to do with the Dennys of Dumbarton, and the tobacco merchant Findlay family?
Last week, the Scottish Civic Trust was visited by Michael Hannon and his wife Rosemary to discuss his book, 'Mrs Findlay's Broadwood Square Piano.' The piano had once belonged to a Mrs Dorothy Findlay, and had once been housed in the Tobacco Merchant's House in Glasgow's Merchant City, where the SCT is based.
Over lunch, John Pelan, SCT Director, swapped stories of Glasgow's Merchant City and the history of the building with Mr Hannon, who told his own absorbing story:
Little did Michael Hannon realize where his research into the origins of his 1804 Broadwood square piano would lead. Originally bought by a Mrs Dorothy Findlay from Glasgow in August 1804, the piano appeared in an Irish auction in 1977 where his mother bought it on a whim.
This fascinating detective story reveals uncanny links between Mrs Findlay’s family, who made their fortune as tobacco merchants and East Indiamen, and the author’s mother’s family, the famous shipbuilding Dennys of Dumbarton: it was an entrepreneurial Findlay/Denny partnership that established the historic ‘Irrawaddy Flotilla’, immortalized by Rudyard Kipling in ‘The Road to Mandalay, where the old flotilla lay..’; and in the 1960s Michael Hannon’s uncle, Edward Denny, sold his house to Mrs Findlay’s three-times-great-grandson, Bill Findlay, who has written the Foreword to the book.
The piano was also the starting point in the romantic but tragic saga of Mrs Findlay’s youngest daughter, ‘The Flighty Dorothea’, who ‘ran off’ with her piano teacher John Donaldson, described by her family as ‘a cur and a scoundrel’. Donaldson went on to a distinguished career as Professor of Music at Edinburgh University, where he founded what is now the oldest museum of musical instruments in the world.
Source: www.mrsfindlaysbroadwoodsquarepiano.co.uk
See the above website for more information, and to order the book.
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Exhibition explores Edinburgh’s unrealised grand designs
Architectural proposals spanning two centuries on display together for the first time marking the Festival of Architecture
An impressive Prince Albert Memorial Keep at Edinburgh Castle and a cylindrical-shaped Sean Connery Filmhouse (pictured above) are amongst a collection of unrealised architectural drawings to have gone on display together for the first time in a new exhibition.
Unbuilt Edinburgh is a Festival of Architecture event with the Edinburgh Architectural Association working in collaboration with Historic Environment Scotland and hosted by Architecture and Design Scotland. The exhibition, which runs until Friday 20 May, showcases a unique display of nineteen design concepts and proposals that never went further than the drawing board.
The works, which are mostly drawn from Historic Environment Scotland’s archive collection, include ambitious, entire new design schemes and additions to some of the capital’s most iconic landmarks. The exhibition features a number of unsuccessful competition entries and proposals from leading Scottish architects and practices from over the last two hundred and thirty years.
Unbuilt Edinburgh is on display at the Architecture and Design Scotland* building in Edinburgh’s Canongate and runs until Friday 20 May. This free exhibition is open Monday to Friday from 9am until 4.30pm and until 6.30pm on Thursdays. Please note that the exhibition will be closed to the public on Monday 9 May.
*Architecture and Design Scotland, 9 Bakehouse Close, 146 Canongate, Edinburgh, EH8 8DD.
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Historic Environment Scotland Conservation Events
Please find below details of forthcoming events organised by Historic Environment Scotland’s Technical Conservation Education and Outreach team.
Repairing Earth Structures
Stirling, 17 May 2016
An introduction to recognising and understanding the construction of earth buildings, specifying repairs and sourcing materials. Including practical demonstration.
Conservation Summer School
Stirling, 6-10 June 2016
Historic Environment Scotland’s Conservation Summer School provides a thorough introduction to building conservation and traditional building materials and skills. The week long course is taught through a combination of talks, workshops, field trips and hands-on activities.
Delegates are taken through building materials such as stone, lime and metal to understand how they work together to create the buildings which surround us, as well as an insight towards how they should be treated to ensure they continue to last.
The course has proved popular with a range of delegates from home owners to professionals seeking to broaden their knowledge. Tickets can be bought by the day (£100) or for the full week of tuition (£450), student bursary places are available for third year undergraduates in a building related subject.
The cost of the course includes all tuition, materials and transport between activities throughout the week, we can also organise reduced-rate accommodation if required
Building Scotland Exhibition
- Hopetoun House: now–Thursday 26 May
- New Lanark: Tuesday 31 May–Friday 12 August
- Highland Folk Museum: Tuesday 16 August–Wednesday 19 October
- Stirling Castle: Tuesday 25 October–New Year
This touring exhibition celebrates fourteen individual building materials. Many, such as stone and timber, have been used since earliest human habitation in Scotland. Others, such as pantiles and iron, came into general use in more recent times.
For the majority of our traditionally constructed buildings it is the use of these materials, in combination with one another, that has created the beautiful and diverse nature of Scotland’s build heritage: stone, lime and pantiles come together to form distinctive buildings in our east coast towns and villages; timber, clay, stone and thatch are combined to form the blackhouses so distinctive of the Western Isles.
It is hoped that this exhibition, based on the “Building Scotland†book, will give an insight into the diverse materials that have literally been the building blocks of our traditional villages and cities throughout Scotland
Please get in touch if you require any further information.
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Scotland's Urban Past
Community groups, societies and local civic trusts all over Scotland are embarking on new heritage projects thanks to Scotland’s Urban Past (SUP), a five-year nationwide initiative about the history of Scotland’s towns and cities from Historic Environment Scotland and supported by Heritage Lottery Fund.
Become an Urban Detective
Heritage lovers are being sought to record a tiny piece of Scotland’s history.
Scotland’s Urban Past are inviting members of the public to get involved in a new nationwide initiative to investigate and record the littlest local landmarks in Scotland’s urban areas.
Volunteers can become ‘Urban Detectives’ by submitting photographs and location coordinates of tiny buildings in Scotland’s towns and cities to the SUP website. Users are also invited to take measurements and sketches, all of which will become part of Canmore, Scotland’s online record of architecture, archaeology and industry.
This national record is a digital time machine, holding images and information about more than 320,000 sites in Scotland. Now, SUP is asking local Urban Detectives to contribute their own images and information about Scottish places – starting with the smallest buildings in the nation’s towns and cities.
SUP provides free training, support and resources to people of all ages to help them discover and share the fascinating stories of Scotland’s towns and cities. Free workshops for Urban Detectives will be taking place throughout Scotland.
If you would like to become an Urban Detective, contact the team at sup@rcahms.gov.uk or visit www.scotlandsurbanpast.org.uk.
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