Robert Haldane (1764-1842) was a theological writer. He was the eldest son of Captain James Haldane, heir to the Airthrey estate, Stirlingshire, and Katherine Duncan of Lundie. He was educated at Dundee Grammar School and Edinburgh High School before joining the Navy in 1780. He returned to civilian life in 1783 and attended Edinburgh University. He married Katherine Cochrane, daughter of George Oswald of Scotstown, in 1786 and settled at the Airthrey estate.

Following the outbreak of the French Revolution, Haldane became increasingly involved in Evangelical work and joined the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel at Home which had been set up by a group of Edinburgh laymen led by his younger brother James. He sold the Airthrey estate to fund his mission and published a series of theological texts including: The Evidence and Authority of Divine Revelation in 1816 and the Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans which was published first in French in 1819. He had also purchased another estate in Auchingray, near Airdrie in 1809. His brother-in-law was Richard Oswald who had employed Robert Adam to work on his estate at Auchincruive in Ayrshire in 1776-78. Haldane died in 1842 and was buried in Glasgow Cathedral.

Haldane inherited the Airthrey Estate after his father’s death in 1768 when he was four years old. After his marriage to Katherine in 1786, he spent a decade improving the estate and excavating a large artificial lake, possibly to designs by Thomas White Senior and Junior, of Durham, who had trained under Capability Brown.

In 1790, Robert Adam made designs for a new castle for Haldane. Adam proposed both a classical villa and a castle-style house with a forecourt, with the client preferring the castle-style scheme. Adam’s approved designs comprised a three-storey, D-shaped, castle-style building with attractive north and south elevations which King states are ‘two of his finest castle-style facades’. This was not the first or last time Adam would design a building with an irregular footprint, having designed a D-shaped classical-style building at Great Saxham in 1779, a lozenge-shaped castle-style building at Barnbougle in 1774, another V-shaped building at Bewley Castle in 1778 and two D-shaped and V-shaped schemes for Barnton Castle in c.1788-92.

John Paterson, Adam’s clerk of works in Edinburgh wrote to Adam on 2 March 1791 and 8 March 1791 reporting that Haldane was charmed with the designs and wanted to proceed according to Adam’s plans, along with an estimate for the full cost. By 22 March, Haldane had hired Thomas Russell of Edinburgh to build the house. Russell had recently worked with Adam on Seton Castle and provided Haldane with an estimate of approximately £3,500-£3,700 (depending on materials) for building Airthrey. Paterson’s correspondence with Adam reveals that despite his best efforts, Haldane decided to hire Russell to construct Airthrey Castle to Adam’s plans without his surveyorship, to avoid the additional cost of 5%. Russell offered Adam a douceur of 2.5% of their total building costs if he would forego the surveyorship. Adam billed Haldane £37.6s.2d for his designs and expenses and instructed Paterson to do nothing more for Haldane.

The executed house was built without the forecourt and Adam’s designs were subject to any alterations made by Russell during construction without his input. However, early engravings and late-nineteenth century photographs show that the house does appear to have been built faithfully to Adam’s designs. The house was constructed in squared coursed stone with a droved finish.

Haldane sold the estate to Sir Robert Abercromby in 1798 and devoted the rest of his life to Protestant Evangelism. It was later bought by a Glasgow merchant, Donald Graham, in 1889. The entrance front was rebuilt in a Scottish Baronial style in c.1891 for Graham to designs by David Thomson, including an extension to the east side, and the interior was remodelled in an Italian Renaissance style. It is not known whether Adam was originally involved in the decoration of the interior and there are no known surviving drawings for the interior. Thomson’s alterations removed any original decorative schemes and the majority of the original internal layout has also been lost over time.

In 1939, during the Second World War, the house was converted into a maternity hospital, with an extension to the east side containing offices and hospital rooms. The estate was sold to the Secretary of State for Scotland in 1946 and granted to Stirling University in 1966. The building continued as a hospital until 1969 when it was transferred to the University as well, with several new buildings added to the grounds.

Literature:
National Library Scotland: MSS.19992-19993, Letters from John Paterson to Robert Adam, 1790-91; A.T. Bolton, The Architecture of Robert and James Adam, Volume II, Index, 1922, pp. 1, 73; J. Fleming, ‘Seton Castle’s debt to Ancient Rome: Robert Adam’s Castle Style – II’, Country Life, 30 May 1968, pp. 1443-7; A. Rowan, Designs for Castles and Villas by Robert and James Adam, 1985, pp. 142-3; D. King, The Complete Works of Robert & James Adam and Unbuilt Adam, Volume 1, 2001, pp. 156, 170-4; Volume 2, 2001, pp. 121, 243; J. Gifford & F. Walker, The Buildings of Scotland: Stirling and Central Scotland, 2002, pp. 114-117; D. Lovegrove, ‘Robert Haldane (1764-1842)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online, [accessed 21 May 2024]; Historic Environment Scotland, ‘Airthrey Castle’, online, [accessed 21 May 2024]; Canmore, ‘Airthrey Castle’, online, [accessed 21 May 2024]

With thanks to the Arts Society Fund and the Art Fund’s Jonathan Ruffer Curatorial Grant which enabled archival visits in Edinburgh to support research for this scheme.

Louisa Catt, 2024