The Georgian House & Bute House: A Palace Made of Houses
Why is it significant?
Face the north side of Charlotte Square and try to read it not as a terrace, but as a single building. There is a central pediment held up by columns, matching pavilions at either end, and a perfect symmetry from corner to corner. That is Robert Adam's great trick.
Key Facts
| Place | The Georgian House & Bute House: A Palace Made of Houses |
|---|---|
| Address | 7 Charlotte Square, Edinburgh EH2 4DR, UK |
| Geo Coordinates | 55.95250, -3.20810 |
| Part of Walk | Edinburgh's New Town: Georgian Squares, Crescents and the Plan That Built a City |
| Generated | Generated |
Face the north side of Charlotte Square and try to read it not as a terrace, but as a single building. There is a central pediment held up by columns, matching pavilions at either end, and a perfect symmetry from corner to corner.
That is Robert Adam's great trick. Behind this one palace front are separate townhouses, each with its own owner, its own door and its own staircase. Every merchant or lawyer who bought one could feel he lived in a duke's palace, and the city got a façade worthy of a capital. Adam had used the same idea in London, but here, in honey-grey sandstone, many people think it reached perfection.
Number 7 is the Georgian House. Its first owner, in 1796, was John Lamont of Lamont, the chief of a Highland clan, who moved into town like many of the landed families of his day. Today the National Trust for Scotland keeps it as it might have looked around 1800, from the dining room laid for guests upstairs to the kitchen, the wine cellar and the servants' world below stairs, where the real work of this elegant life was done.
Next door, number 6, behind the central door, is Bute House. The family of the Marquess of Bute passed it to the National Trust for Scotland in the 1960s, it became the official residence of the Secretary of State for Scotland, and since 1999 it has been the official residence of Scotland's First Minister. When you see television crews waiting on this pavement, this is why.
A few doors along, at number 9, lived the surgeon Joseph Lister, who taught the world antiseptic surgery, and at number 24 Douglas Haig, the First World War field marshal, was born in 1861. Leave the square at its north-west corner and walk gently downhill, along Glenfinlas Street, into a quieter and stranger kind of New Town.