#drumsheugh — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

An unhappy matrimonial home: the thread about Lynedoch House and the building hidden within its walls

Today’s property listing of historical interest is a flat in a curious Victorian, mock-Tudorbethan house at 1 Belford Road at the head of the road above the Dean Village (or as it would have been known at the time, the Water of Leith village). n.b. the property listing has long since been removed, but you can view an archive copy of it here.

1 Belford Road, 4 bedrooms, offers over £550,000

The insides of this flat are almost entirely modern, all plasterboard walls and mod cons, so not much to write about, but the views are both pretty and pretty spectacular!

View across the roofs to the Dean Bridge and former Trinity Episcopal ChurchView over the rooftops of the Water of Leith village to the two towers of the Dean Orphan Hospital

What was once a single house is now split up into three separate flats and offices. Visually, it’s quite a remarkable – and more than a little bonkers – structure; a fantasia of different styles all cobbled together into one reasonably coherent structure on quite a challenging plot.

Rear elevationFront elevationNortheast elevationSouthwest elevation

One of the most intriguing features of the house is a band of stucco around the lower courses of the building, impressed with the motif of an H, an eagle and a thistle along with love hearts in the original cast iron window bars:

Intriguing details; impressions of an eagle, a thistle and the letter H in the render and a love heart in the window bars.

This house was built in 1891 as Lynedoch House by the architect Sir George Washington Browne who had an admiration for the Old English style and is perhaps best known for Edinburgh’s Caledonian Hotel. It was built for Charles Martin Hardie RSA (1858-1916), a native of East Lothian and a fashionable and successful artist known for paintings of Scottish life and also portraits of Robert Burns and Walter Scott. Hardie built the house as a family home and his studio. The name Lynedoch was already a local placename, having been applied in the 1820s by the landowner Major James Weir RM to honour Thomas Graham, Baron Lynedoch, a hero of the peninsular war.

“Friendly Critics” by Charles Martin Hardie. Hardie is seen on the left, leaning on the frame, showing his work to friends. This was painted 10 years before the construction of his house at Belford Road. CC-by-NC National Galleries of Scotland.

The “H” impressed in the render is Hardie’s initial; the thistle is for Scotland and the eagle is for America, from where his first wife – Mary Lewis – hailed. The couple married in 1889 and the love heart was a symbol of their matrimonial bond. It didn’t work out however, Charles divorced her in 1895 after she ran off with an actor. The case was heard by Lord Moncrieff in the Court of Session and caused a sensation in the papers at the time. It was so heavily attended at court that his Lordship had to have the public ejected to make room for all the junior lawyers and reporters who had attended. The husband alleged that after the birth of their second child – who did not live to see his first birthday – his wife had become weak and had spent a lot of time in London staying with friends to recuperate. He was too busy with work to either accompany her or care for her himself but on one of her visits away he decided to go to London to find her. His suspicions were aroused when he could not do so and she turned up later in Sydney, Australia! It transpired that she had voyaged with an actor and opera singer by the name of Mr Courtice Pounds and “she admitted misconduct with him in his rooms“. The manager of the hotel in question would testify that she had been playing the part of Pounds’ wife, that the room had but one bed and that they had occupied it overnight. On this evidence alone the judge granted Charles his divorce and custody of the couple’s daughter.

Courtice Pounds in 1890. National Portrait Gallery, Ax9376

Pounds soon abandoned Mary and took up with another woman of the same name, the Irish actress Mary Gertrude Cranfield. Mary Hardie refused to reconcile with either her husband or her wealthy parents back in America and instead took up the name Jones to try her hand as an actress. Her family continued to give her an allowance of £240 a year (about £40,000 in 2022) which she ended up spending on drink and what the newspapers called “stimulants“. The same newspapers reported as being depressed. The death of her second child, the breakdown of her marriage, the loss of custody of her first child, her abandonment by her lover and the schism with her parents must have all been heartbreaking for her. While touring with the play How London Lives in Burnley she drank herself to death on Thursday 6th October 1898, aged just 27.

Lynedoch House clearly had a very short and unhappy life as a matrimonial home, but all is not quite what it seems with the place; within its walls is an older and smaller house called Drumsheugh Toll. This 1820s cottage was for the keeper who enforced the turnpike road tolls of the Cramond district; the roads from the city leading to the Cramond Brig and onwards to the west along the Queensferry Road route.

1849 OS Town Plan showing the Drumsheugh Toll (marked “T.P.”), note the barrier and posts across the road and the weighing machine for assessing the charges. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

The trustees of the turnpike roads did not employ tollkeepers, rather they built a tollhouse and then let it out to the highest bidder, who made their income from enforcing and collecting the tolls.

For every coach, berlin, landau chariot, chaise or calash, drawn by six horses, the levy was 2s; but a one-horse chaise paid only 3d. Waggons, wains or carts paid charges graded from 6s, if pulled by six horses, to 3d if pulled by one only. a single horse, unyoked, incurred a charge of 3/4d; oxen, 7 1/2d per score, and sheep 3 3/4 d per score.”
A description of the tolls in force at Kirkbreahead

Drumsheugh was the third location of the district toll bar. In its first incarnation of 1755 it was known as the West Kirk Toll (after the West Kirk, now known as St. Cuthbert’s) and was positioned at the end of what was then known as the Lang Dykes, a fairly rough road on the alignment of what would later become Princes Street. The toll migrated around 1790-1800 to a location now underneath the Queensferry Road, where Bell’s Brae and Belford Road now split off of it where it was known as the Kirkbreahead Toll. The Kirkbraehead was literally the top of the hill to the kirk (church), referring to the walk that the parishioners of the Dean and Water of Leith villages would have to have made to get to the West Kirk. To make way for the Dean Bridge, construction of which began in 1829, the toll moved again, about 100m west to the position at 1 Belford Road; the Drumsheugh Toll. It is this toll house which would be incorporated into Hardie’s Lynedoch House.

The movements of the Cramond District toll bars, 1755-1883

When the Dean Bridge opened in 1831 the Queensferry Road was redirected across it, rather than down the hill to the Belford Bridge, bypassing the Drumsheugh Toll. A further toll house, the fourth, therefore had to be opened opened on the Queensferry Road at the head of Orchard Brae; the Dean Check Toll, to make sure nobody slipped by without paying. In 1832 the city boundary had moved some 800 metres west but the toll bars did not follow suit until 1854. This made the Drumsheugh and Dean Check tolls redundant and a new toll was opened where Queensferry Road meets Queensferry Terrace; the Dean Park Toll.

The Drumsheugh keeper’s cottage was retained by the Cramond District at this time, in 1855 the resident was Walter Gordon, a stonemason in their employ. a residence. The nearby building of Kirkbrae House is frequently mistaken for the toll house given its prominent location at the end of the Dean Bridge however this was instead the home and business premises of Cabbie Stewart, a horse cab proprietor and local worthie. Stewart accumulated considerable wealth and built himself this rambling Scottish Baronial pile incorporating many old decorative stones from the neighbourhood. His stables however do form the basement levels of Lynedoch House to its rear on Bell’s Brae.

Cabbie Stewart’s House at the head of Bell’s Brae and the south end of Dean Bridge

You can see how the Drumsheugh toll fits into Lynedoch House by overlaying an 1887 photo by Thomas Begbie with the current street view (original image can be viewed here © The Cavaye Collection of Thomas Begbie Prints; The City of Edinburgh Council Museums & Galleries).

NowAndThen animated gif transition of Drumsheugh Toll and Lynedoch House

It is the projecting window of the toll house, which would have allowed the keeper a clear view up and down the road that they controlled, and the front door which is the point of constant reference here. A further clue to Lynedoch House’s predecessor is the name painted above the door!

Drumsheugh Toll painted sign

Charles Hardie remarried in 1899 to Margaret Sommerville Smart and kept his studio at Lynedoch but wisely did not reoccupy the house as his matrimonial residence. Instead the rest of the building was split up, the house occupied by the Misses Boyd. In the photos above and below, the Norman-style church is the Dean Free Church which was built in the 1840s. It removed itself to a much grander and larger building at the other end of Belford Road to better serve its parish in 1888, the old building becoming another artists studio; the Dean Studio. The lower storey, formerly the church school, became the Edinburgh Arts & Crafts Club and the upper levels were occupied by a variety of artists. The 1905 postal directory lists William Grant Stevenson RSA (sculptor and painter), Joseph Hayes (sculptor), Miss Meta Napier Brown (arts and crafts silversmith) and Thomas Beattie (sculptor).

A 1902 photograph of Lynedoch House – notice the entire façade is covered in render, not just the lower courses, with the ex-Dean Free Church and the Drumsheugh Baths behind. © Edinburgh City Libraries

In 1906 Charles Hardie stood in the Town Council elections as a Unionist candidate, putting his address as Lynedoch Studio, but was soundly beaten by the incumbent. In 1912 he was still based at the studio for work but by this time was living in North Queensferry. The Misses Boyd were still in the house, now number 2 Belford Road and the Edinburgh Arts & Crafts Club and the Dean Studio still in the church at number 4. Hardie died in 1916, aged 58, after a heart attack. His obituary did not mention his first marriage and divorce. After this studio was occupied by R. S. Kennedy, a dealer in Austin cars, who remained here until 1939.

In 1934 the former main hall of the old Free Church was converted into a theatre by the author and playwright Christine Orr who had 100 seats installed in front of a stage and based her theatre company – The Makars – here. It was taken over during WW2 as an ARP (Air Raid Precautions) and first aid post. She was unable to return after the war and instead it was taken over by ornamental woodworkers Robert Laurie & Son., who were still based here when the premises burned down in 1954.

The remains of the first Dean Free Church after the fire, Edinburgh Evening News, 1954

Lynedoch House was split into 3 private residences at some point before 1940 and was category B listed in December 1970. The ground floor had by this time became occupied by the Waddel School of Music and the upper floors by the Edinburgh Society of Musicians, who have a recital room and practice rooms there to this day.

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