Charles Hope-Weir (1710-91) was the second son of Charles Hope, 1st Earl of Hopetoun. He adopted the name ‘Weir’ upon his first marriage to Catherine Weir in 1733. Catherine died in 1743 and Hope-Weir married Anne Vane in 1746. This marriage was dissolved in 1757. He married a third time in 1766 to Helen Dunbar. He was a politician and sat as MP for Linlithgowshire in 1743-68. He also held the following offices: Governor of Blackness Castle, Muster-Master General, Trustee for Fisheries and Manufactures, Commissioner for forfeited estates and Chamberlain of Ettrick Forest. He was known as a connoisseur of the arts and in 1754 he set off for his Grand Tour, taking the young architect, Robert Adam, as his companion. Adam was already known to the Hopes, having advised Hope-Weir’s brother on the internal decoration of his seat, Hopetoun House.

Hope-Weir had inherited the Craigiehall estate from his uncle in 1730. The property comprised a seventeenth-century villa by Sir William Bruce. Upon Hope-Weir’s return from his Grand Tour, he replanned and extended the park, including the addition of a temple, bridge, grotto and bathhouse.

In 1766, almost a decade after Hope-Weir’s additions had been made, Robert Adam made an unexecuted design for ‘finishing the library at Craigiehall’, which is now in the collection of the National Monuments Record of Scotland. Adam also made a design for a chimneypiece for Charles Hope-Weir in 1777. It is not clear where this design was intended for, however, it is probable that it was for his principal residence at Craigiehall.

Literature: A.T. Bolton, The Architecture of Robert and James Adam, 1922, Volume II, Index, pp. 55, 75; J. Fleming, Robert Adam and his circle in Edinburgh and Rome, 1962, pp. 106-119, 340-1; J. Gifford (et. al.), The Buildings of Scotland: Edinburgh, 1984, pp. 591-2; S. Pryke, ‘Curiosities of a cabinet’, Country Life, 11 January 1996, pp. 44-45; D. King, The Complete Works of Robert & James Adam and Unbuilt Adam, Volume 2, 2001, p. 179

Louisa Catt, 2023