Explore Collections Explore The Collections
You are here: CollectionsOnline  /  Bellevue House, Drummond Place, Edinburgh: designs for a house and stables for Major General John Scott, 1774-76 (13)

Purpose

Bellevue House, Drummond Place, Edinburgh: designs for a house and stables for Major General John Scott, 1774-76 (13)

Signed and dated

  • 1774-76

Notes

John Scott (1725-75) was the second son of David Scott of Scotstarvit. He was a military officer, attaining the rank of Ensign in 1741, Captain in 1744, Lieutenant-Colonel in 1755, Colonel in 1762, and Major General in 1770. Scott also served as MP for Caithness in 1764-61, for Tain (northern) Burghs in 1761-68, and Fifeshire in 1768-75. He was most famed, however, as a skilful and successful gambler, and reputedly earned a fortune of around £500,000 by these means. He purchased the Balcomie estate in Anstruther, Fife, and built himself a house in the suburbs around Edinburgh called Bellevue House, facing up Dublin Street, in Drummond Place.

In 1770 Scott married Lady Mary Hay (divorced 1771), and then in 1773 he married Margaret Dundas, third daughter of Robert Dundas of Arniston, Lord President of The Court of Session. It is likely that it was through this Dundas family connection that Scott came into contact with Robert Adam, whom in 1774 he commissioned to make designs for his house in Edinburgh. Adam made two schemes for the house itself, and the second scheme was executed, albeit with an alternative entrance loggia, or porch, to that shown in the elevation drawing. A later design for stables was not executed, and it is not known if Adam decorated the interior. Bellevue House was used as the Excise Office for many years before its demolition in c1840.

Literature:
A.T. Bolton, The architecture of Robert and James Adam, 1922, Volume II, Index pp. 12, 87; D. King, The complete works of Robert & James Adam and unbuilt Adam, 2001, Volume I, pp. 105, 127-29, Volume II, pp. 122, 215; History of Parliament online: ‘Scott, John (1725-75), of Balcomie, Fife’

Frances Sands, 2013

Level

Scheme

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

If you have any further information about this object, please contact us: drawings@soane.org.uk

Sir John Soane's collection includes some 30,000 architectural, design and topographical drawings which is a very important resource for scholars worldwide. His was the first architect’s collection to attempt to preserve the best in design for the architectural profession in the future, and it did so by assembling as exemplars surviving drawings by great Renaissance masters and by the leading architects in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries and his near contemporaries such as Sir William Chambers, Robert Adam and George Dance the Younger. These drawings sit side by side with 9,000 drawings in Soane’s own hand or those of the pupils in his office, covering his early work as a student, his time in Italy and the drawings produced in the course of his architectural practice from 1780 until the 1830s.

Browse (via the vertical menu to the left) and search results for Drawings include a mixture of Concise catalogue records – drawn from an outline list of the collection – and fuller records where drawings have been catalogued in more detail (an ongoing process).  


Contents of Bellevue House, Drummond Place, Edinburgh: designs for a house and stables for Major General John Scott, 1774-76 (13)