At first glance, Edzell seems like a residue of the Edwardian era, rather douce and self-content in its wee bubble of good weather. In reality, it is a “planned” village which was feued and laid out in 1839 on a grid-iron street plan to supplant the nearby Slateford. It was one of the local laird’s good works. Notable buildings in Edzell include Thomas Cappon’s Panmure Arms Hotel (he also designed the Ramsay Arms in nearby Fettercairn), and the now demolished Free Kirk designed by Patrick Thoms of Thoms & Wilkie– a big-roofed, low-walled building with a sturdy tower. However, as you emerge from the Dalhousie Arch, your first impression is always of the Inglis Hall, a sturdy redstone building which sits back from the broad boulevarde of Edzell’s High Street.
The Inglis Memorial Hall was built between 1897 and 1898 to the design of Charles and Leslie Ower, the quarrelsome sons of Charles senior, Dundee’s Harbour Engineer. They too practiced in Dundee: first as apprentices to their father, then in partnership together and finally as architects in their own right, after an acrimonious dissolution. Charles Ower (1849-1921) was articled to his father in the 1870’s, then attended classes in South Kensington and travelled in Europe: he was an architect, a qualified structural engineer, a watercolourist and an antiquarian. Charles commenced independent practice in Dundee in 1873: his brother Leslie (1851-1916) became an assistant to their father, also did his version of the Grand Tour on the Continent, then went into partnership with Charles in 1874.
The hall was commissioned by Lieutenant-Colonel Robert W. Inglis, then Head of the London Stock Exchange, as a memorial to his parents– his father, also Robert, was the Kirk of Scotland minister for Edzell and Lochlee. An architectural competition was held in 1896– a contemporary issue of The Builder magazine (LXX, 318) notes that the contest attracted 170 entries– Charles and Leslie Ower were placed first, ahead of J. Sim, in second place. Not only does the number of entries signify an important competition, but the fact that it was judged in London also underlines the Owers’ achievement in winning. As construction commenced, you can readily imagine Charles Ower, perhaps accompanied by an assistant who would deal with chores such as taking minutes and carrying rolls of drawings, taking the train from Dundee East Station then disembarking a leisurely hour-and-a-half later, directly opposite the building site. No doubt conversation on board the train would have centred on the progress of the works, the quality of the finished article, and on detailing issues…
Although the building appears symmetrical from the front, its parti deceives, since the larger blocks of accommodation face south, in order to maximise the benefits of light and warmth. On the southern side of the ground floor is the main hall, organised axially with a stage and first floor gallery, and alongside is the Parish Council Room with a formally-arranged table and oil portraits lining the walls. To the west is the Small Hall, complete with mantelpiece clock; the Edzell Library is housed in a room at the front of the building, allowing it to operate independently of the halls. The first floor contains a short range of offices, and a spiral stairwell which rises into the clocktower.
Edzell Library is remarkable but rather unsung: it is one of the best-preserved examples we have of a late 19th Century public library– perhaps even a unique survivor. The single room has tall stained-glass windows, and a bow-fronted bay facing west, an iron-framed mezzanine, and a reading Room above which was accessed via a precipitous spiral staircase. It still contains the majority of the original stock of 5111 volumes which were personally chosen by Colonel Inglis when it opened in 1898; the Library and Information History Group has been interested for many years in preserving it, and academics have suggested that Edzell Library is the closest thing we have to a museum of public librarianship in Britain. Students of librarianship from Robert Gordon University spent part of 2004 and 2005 researching the library’s use and context, in the hope that they can bring it to the attention of a wider audience, and help to ensure its survival as a complete entity. Incidentally, the Victorian solution was to threaten anyone who damaged the stock with the hall’s caretaker, Sergeant-Major Henderson, who would drop them over the Gannochy Brig…
The hall’s massing, and also its grids of mullioned windows make it distinctive: the Owers’ dual-discipline approach to architecture and engineering facilitated the south elevation, with its large expanse of stained glass, framed in slim ashlar transoms and mullions. This screen is technically innovative in terms of Scottish architecture in the late 19th century: it apparently defies the large outward thrust of the building’s roof which sits directly above it. In fact, this is a Victorian version of the contemporary “curtain wall”, where the vastly increased proportion of glazed area to supporting framework means that the wall cannot bear any large loads. This is in marked contrast to the traditional post and beam, or trabeated, wall, where the scale of glazed openings was always restricted by the inability of stone lintols to span large distances. Similarly transparent facades feature in much of their later work, plus that of their one-time assistant, Lamond; Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s near-contemporary Scotland Street School in Glasgow is the closest Scottish comparison. Compared to the derivative Glenesk Hotel opposite, this building is far more conscious of where it is, and the era of which it was a part.
Analysing the building, you realise that its strong identity is founded in the use of local prototypes and local materials– the lightly-picked ashlar work and tight, lime-pointed joints particularly suit the dark madder-coloured sandstone– and the clear atmosphere of Edzell means that the stone’s colouring has matured, rather than decayed due to pollution. Inglis Hall was built using stone indigenous to this part of Angus, a type of Old Red Sandstone which may have been quarried nearby at Inveriscandye. The pivot of the building’s composition is the clock tower, directly above the main entrance: its stone-slated roof is a reference to Brechin Cathedral’s Round Tower, with a dentile course at the wallhead where the circle transforms into an octagon, and cute lucarnes on every other pitch. The hall shares that octagonal tower with the Owers’ Trinity Kirk in Newport-on-Tay, although in this case with a carillade of bells which is still in good working order. The Westminster quarter clock strikes five bells cast by Gillett & Johnston, with the largest weighing over half a ton: the clock itself used to automatically adjust the gas lighting in the hall, according to time and season. Effectively, a Victorian dimmer switch.
One observation which you make immediately is that the hall is in excellent condition: it was built to a high specification, and obviously never ill-used nor allowed to run down to the point where refurbishment was needed. The high mouldings of the skirtings, the reeded facings and the built-up panelled doors are in either varnished oak or pitch pine– dense, old growth timber which is impossible to get nowadays for love or money. The enamelled mosaic plaque above the entrance, down to the original Smith’s Patent floorsprings in their original brass floor boxes at the main doors, all speak “quality”, and the robust Victorian detailing is quite a contrast to the fragile shadow gaps and negative detailing fashionable today. The use of dark-stained woodwork, and the large sections used, can make turn-of-the-century buildings seem heavy, yet that tendency is balanced here by strong natural lighting, so that the rooms simply seem well-grounded and solid.
Both the carillade and the stained glass work– which contains both coloured tableaux and couthy Scots saws– were produced by the best craftsmen of the period, drawing on a suitably generous budget. The mottos include, “Ca canny and flee laigh”, and “Birth’s guid, but breedin’s better”, which say a lot about Inglis, who chose them personally. Robert Inglis was a son of the manse (born in 1843, he styled himself a Disruption bairn), who lived in grand style at Craigendowie, Reigate, Surrey with his wife– plus, reputedly, a kept woman, installed in a similar villa literally just around the corner. When his first wife died, you might have expected a touch of Victorian propriety: but when Inglis re-married, he retained the previous arrangement and held on to his mistress!
The Owers illustrate other aspects of the Victorian era, too: their earlier work takes in a “Hammer Horror” gothic phase during the 1880’s, when they built Seymour Lodge on Perth Road, and similar mansions on Hyndford and Rockfield Streets, all in Dundee’s West End. These were followed by the Trinity United Free Kirk in Newport-on-Tay, then the rogue Scots Baronial of the North of Scotland (now Clydesdale) Bank on Lochee’s High Street, with its extravagant courses of corbels: ironically, this was the only one of their designs to be exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. Next came Pitlochry West Kirk in 1884; Duncraig (a large mansion in Broughty Ferry, completed in 1890) then the Flemish-inflected Gothic of the Pearl Assurance building on Dundee’s Meadowside– built in the same year as the Inglis Hall, but taking on a very different expression. Much of their earlier work is High Victorian, in the sense of being highly ornamented, almost “gingerbread”. Inglis Hall marks a maturity in their work which looked forward to the Edwardian age, and proved that they could successfully integrate and begin to transcend their influences.
It was Charles rather than Leslie who dealt with the Inglis Hall contract, and with Robert Inglis himself: it’s a safe bet that both client and architect were strong characters. The bewhiskered Inglis stamped his identity on the building, with his family crest appearing throughout, and the choice of pawky mottos; the owlish Ower no doubt had to deal with a benefactor seeking to be indulged. Charles was the founder of the Dundee Institute of Architects in 1884, and became president in 1890: he later resigned in 1903 in protest when the Institute objected to the licensed trade’s attempts to get architects to tender for work, rather than being paid standard fees. Clearly, he was happy to negotiate and horse-trade, whereas his colleagues weren’t: but the arguments about fee scales and price protection have raged within the profession ever since. Some things never change. Leslie became a fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1890, and followed his brother as D.I.A. president in 1896.
We may yet return to the Owers’ vision of Scottish architecture, using literate quotations from our heritage, rather than just stealing motifs from the past– such as crowstepped gables– in the hope of making something appear “Scottish”. As Theo Crosby of latter-day architects Pentagram wrote about the 1960’s stage of Modern architecture– “What we have built is so bad, without order or quality, that it has become imperative that we should hang onto every scrap of the pre-modern world. In our time, we have seen the beginning of a new, universal architecture and found it inadequate. The inevitable response is towards an eclecticism within which something more complex and satisfying can be forged.”
The Inglis Hall is a complex and eclectically Scottish building, and the Ower brothers– if they stopped arguing with everyone around them, and each other– would surely have understood and agreed with him.
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