Elgin's Adam Mansion

The Story of Grant Lodge

Written by: G. A. Dixon and originally published in The Northern Scot on 25th February 2005

"The Palace of Elgin", as it was often called in Georgian times ⁽¹⁾ the only Robert Adam mansion in Moray ⁽²⁾ , Grant Lodge grew from a kindly act by the Good Sir James Grant of Grant, M.P. for Moray in George III’s first parliament ⁽³⁾ .

His aunt, Lady Innes, had been widowed in 1762 and the finances of her son, Sir James Innes, had soon collapsed to a point at which he had to sell Innes House and the family estates to Lord Fife and settle for several decades in England (where, nearly half a century later, he rescued the family fortunes by hooking a dukedom, of Roxburghe, and fathering an heir to it at the age of 80) ⁽⁴⁾.

Back in 1765, however, while the young Laird of Grant was busy founding Grantown⁽⁵⁾ his favourite aunt needed a house. He turned to the greatest of the Adam brothers, indeed in many eyes the greatest British architect of the century, Robert Adam⁽⁶⁾, who had already, with his elder brother John, massively extended Castle Grant⁽⁷⁾. Before the year was out, the Good Sir James (as he is still fondly remembered in Strathspey) decided to kill two birds with one stone, by using Robert Adam’s plan first of all to guide the building of Coulnakyle House near Nethybridge ⁽⁸⁾. (In the resulting edifice there, the Chief's alcoholic eldest sister spent her final years around the turn of the century.)

The master builder engaged in 1766 to bring Grant Lodge into being was named in the endorsement of his detailed tender: “Estimate of a house to be built at Elgin for Lady Innes contracted by Andrew Smith from a plan from R. Adams architect, London”⁽⁹⁾.

The location effectively chose itself – Sir James already owned an ideal site, the 40 acres and more of garden ground between Elgin Cathedral, the Lossie and the High Street⁽¹⁰⁾. The existing "old building" there was to be treated simply as a quarry for some of the stones for the new one. In addition to 43 ½ roods of rough stone, 1345 feet of hewn stone were required for rebuts, soles, lintels, corners, stairs and coping ⁽¹¹⁾. 1566 bolls of lime were to be brought from Banff. In all, the mason work was estimated to cost £207 12s 6d⁽¹²⁾.

Owner of the largest surviving expanse of natural pine forest in Britain⁽¹³⁾, the Good Sir James was at no loss for timber for his new Elgin mansion. 399 trees ranging in length from 33 to 11 feet and 1818 deals (for flooring, sarking and window cases)⁽¹⁴⁾ were the principal demands to be made upon Abernethy Forest and floated down the Spey, as timber for the neighbouring Cathedral had come centuries before⁽¹⁵⁾.

For "timber & workmanship", the estimate came to £304 12s 0d. Adding £35 19s 6d for slating brought the total to £548 4s 0d⁽¹⁶⁾ . The cost at the time of a standard turf hut, then the normal housing in Strathspey, was £1 10s 0d ⁽¹⁷⁾.

In the event, the actual building over the next two or three years appears to have been done on a time-and-lime basis and no final cost has come to light in the surviving bundle of partial accounts awash with details such as 19 shillings for 38 days of a labourer souring lime, two shillings and a penny for 25 pounds of hair for the plaster,and three shillings for 3 panes of crown glass for the west window of Lady Innes’s room⁽¹⁸⁾. One receipt in particular, signed at Castle Grant on 29th June 1767, brings home the sweep of territory involved in the creation of Grant Lodge : slater Alexander Smith was paid £1 11s 6d for his travelling expenses to Fort George, Inverness, Cairnty, Melrose (near what was not then yet called Macduff) and Portsoy "in Search of Slate & Lead & taking off Sixteen thousand Icedell [i.e., Easdale in Argyll] Slate at Portsoy & seeing the same deliver'd at Lossie Mouth" ⁽¹⁹⁾.

Robert Adam's actual plan does not survive. A letter written by another James Grant at Coulnakyle on 22nd February 1768 suggests why: "I have not the Plan of this house … when Mr Forbes got that Plan from here first, it was as Clean and hail, as when it come; but when Archd. Huston gote it back from Elgin (to direct him in building the stair here) it was so cutt and Stain'd, that it was Scarcely Legible, and I do believe that the Elgin Masons had it always on the Scaffold while at Work"⁽²⁰⁾.

Not quite a year later, the Good Sir James was able to mark the completion of his modest Adam mansion by writing to the leading Elgin lawyer, Patrick Duff, with whom he was having a brief boundary dispute: "Upon the whole, my Dear Sir, After having built such a house, it is proper to make the grounds about it suitable convenient and compact – which I have done by the Plann, & really I have found I could not take less with the view of Lady Innes's enjoying it comfortably now, & my own family hereafter"⁽²¹⁾.

Lady Innes died in 1771⁽²²⁾ and with the sale of Moy House shortly afterwards, Grant Lodge became the Grant Chiefs' main Lowland residence until they inherited Cullen House in 1811⁽²³⁾. In 1789 Sir James decided to enlarge it and got from Robert Adam's future assistant, John Paterson⁽²⁴⁾, a plan which would by giving Grant Lodge pavilion wings have turned it into a miniature Hopetoun House⁽²⁵⁾. Instead, in 1790-91, Sir James added simply one back wing⁽²⁶⁾, giving the Grants' Elgin home the L-shaped outline it maintained until the Victorian accretions which, if anything, rather coarsened its Georgian austerity ⁽²⁷⁾.

In 1899 the Good Sir James's widowed grand-daughter-in-law, Caroline, Countess Dowager of Seafield, her emigrant heir by then on the other side of the globe, sold Grant Lodge and its grounds for £5,500 ⁽²⁸⁾to another Elgin lawyer, George Cooper, whose presentation of his purchase to the royal burgh of Elgin in 1903 was visually commemorated in these columns on 3rd December last.

An important part of the Elgin scene for nearly a quarter of a millennium, Grant Lodge symbolises northern Moray's deep-rooted links with its Highland hinterland temporarily torn away in 1975 to give Aviemore its own and now already abandoned second-tier council – a hinterland still longing to be back in Moray where it belongs.

Notes and references

(added in September 2011 to the above text published in The Northern Scot on 25th February 2005):

1. National Records of Scotland: Seafield Muniments: GD248/710/1: Lewis Alexander Grant of Grant, Grant Lodge, to his father, Sir James Grant of Grant, Edinburgh, 31st May 1808. Back
2. In pre-1975 Moray; Letterfourie House was a 1773 Robert Adam mansion in Banffshire: H. Colvin: A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840 (3rd edn., 1995), p. 59. Back
3. W. Fraser: The Chiefs of Grant (1883), vol. I, pp. 442-461. Back
4. G. E. C[ockayne]: The Complete Peerage, vol XI (1949), pp. 226-27. Back
5. G. A. Dixon: Ten articles on the founding of Grantown, The Strathspey and Badenoch Herald, 20/9/1990 to 6/12/1990.Back
6. H. Colvin: op. cit., pp. 51-62.Back
7. GD248/176/1/25: John Adam, Edinburgh, to Sir Ludovick Grant of Grant; 29th March 1753.Back
8. GD248/1542: "The House at Culnakyle is to be built according to the Plan of Mr Adams … Castle Grant Nov. 27 … 1765 Signd Ja: Grant [of Grant]"; GD248/508/1: James Grant, Coulnakyle, to James Grant, Clerk at Castle Grant, 22nd February 1768.Back
9. GD248/250/2/28: "Estimate of a House for Lady Innes by a Plan from R. Adams Arch" ("sent from London").Back
10. NRS: RHP81200: "Plan of Grant Lodge Grounds &c the property of The Countess Dowager of Seafield … 24th Septr 1884". (But see A. P. K. Wright: "Grant Lodge Elgin Conservation Statement [February 2006], pp. 5, 9, 16)".Back
11. GD248/178/2/110: "Estimate of the expence of the mason work of a house designed to be built at Elgine 1766".Back
12. GD248/250/2/28.Back
13. Particularly Abernethy Forest in Strathspey: William Roy: The Great Map: The Military Survey of Scotland 1747-55 (2007), plate 129.Back
14. GD248/250/2/28.Back
15. Cosmo Innes, ed.:Registrum Episcopatus Moraviensis (1837), p. 420. Back
16. GD240/250/2/28.Back
17. GD248/232: accounts for building "Feal houses" in 1766. Back
18. Gd248/505/6: unnumbered building accounts of the late 1760s. Back
19. Ibid., receipt by Alexander Smith, Castle Grant, 29th June 1767. Back
20. GD248/508/1: James Grant, Coulnakyle, to James Grant, Clerk at Castle Grant, 22nd February 1768.Back
21. GD248/2082, p. 264: copy letter James Grant of Grant to Patrick Duff, Elgin [February 1769].Back
22. Earl of Cassillis: The Rulers of Strathspey: A History of the Lairds of Grant and Earls of Seafield (1911), p. 135.Back
23. Ibid.: p. 156.Back
24. H. Colvin: op. cit., p. 739.Back
25. RHP9065: "Plan and Elavation of Sir James Grants House in Elgin with the Adition of Corridores and Wings – Elgin 7 July 1789 – Jn. Paterson Archt", and GD248/28/2/8: John Paterson, Elgin, to Sir James Grant of Grant, Castle Grant, 7th July 1789.Back
26. RHP9067 and 9068: unsigned plans "of Sir James Grants House at Elgin with an Addition " (showing the back wing on the east, not the west). Many letters about the extension while under construction in 1790-91 survive, e.g., GD248/362/1: William Forbes, Elgin, to Sir James Grant of Grant, Castle Grant, 28th August 1790: "This Day the Laying of the Found of the wester wing is Begun".Back
27. A. P. K. Wright: op. cit., pp. 15-18.Back
28. NRS: RS109/128, fos. 50-53: on 23rd November 1899, the Dowager Countess of Seafield sold Grant Lodge and its grounds to "John Clark Esquire lately Planter in Ceylon presently residing at Blackhills House near Elgin", who soon afterwards sold them to George (from 1905, Sir George) Cooper. Back