The Ardkinglas estate is located near the head of Loch Fyne, not far from Inveraray Castle, the ancestral seat of the Dukes of Argyll, chiefs of Clan Campbell. It was in the possession of a cadet branch of the Campbell family from the fourteenth century and the Campbells of Ardkinglas were for many centuries the principal landowners and heritors of the parish of Lochgoilhead and Kilmorich. A baronetcy of Ardkinglas was established in 1679 for Sir Colin Campbell (c.1640-1709) but became extinct on the death of his son Sir James Campbell (c.1666-1752), a long-serving MP in the Scottish and latterly the British parliaments.

The medieval castle of Ardkinglas consisted of a quadrangular courtyard castle with large round turrets on three corners and a defensive gate tower in the centre of the front elevation. By the middle of the eighteenth century this building was largely in ruins, spawning a series of proposals for its replacement with a more fashionable Georgian mansion.

Sir James Campbell first commissioned a new house in 1729 from Colen Campbell who provided a scheme based on Palladio’s Villa Emo but died later the same year. Several decades later, Robert Adam produced two schemes for Sir James’s grandson and heir, Sir James Livingston Campbell, 3rd Baronet of Glentirran (c.1719-1788): a classical design in 1773 and a castellated one in c.1780, neither of which were taken forward. Sir Alexander Livingston Campbell (d.1810) inherited Ardkinglas from his father and in turn commissioned designs from James Playfair.

As with many of Playfair’s new commissions after 1785, his introduction to Sir Alexander may have come through the political circles surrounding Henry Dundas. Playfair’s journal records that he visited Ardkinglas for two days in early October 1790, just as Sir Alexander was mounting a campaign to enter parliament for Stirlingshire backed by Dundas and the ministry (his father having been the MP in 1747-1768 and Governor of Stirling Castle in 1763-1788). As with Playfair’s schemes for other Dundas allies like David Scott of Dunninald and Robert Barclay of Urie, the rebuilding of Sir Alexander’s country seat may have been an attempt to establish his reputation as part of his (ultimately unsuccessful) bid to enter politics.

The Soane Museum’s set of Playfair’s drawings for Ardkinglas are datable based on the evidence of the architect’s journal and of a presentation folio entitled Design for a Marine Pavilion, dated 1790 and held at Ardkinglas. Following Playfair’s visit on 7-8 October 1790 during his annual visit to Scotland, the journal notes that he was preparing his drawings on his return to London throughout December (including on Christmas Day). Sir Alexander was charged £21 for ‘a design in finished drawgs wt descriptions of the works complete. Estimated expense £2500’ which is presumably the formal portfolio surviving at Ardkinglas. The Soane Museum’s drawings mostly appear to be office copies of these designs.

On 18 January 1791, Playfair received instructions to alter the design ‘to make elevations … without the dome’ and ‘to insert on a ground plan the situation of the house’ and a few days later records working on the revised drawings. No full designs for the house without the dome are known to exist, but McWilliam suggests that the ground plan referred to is a surviving estate plan by Playfair dated 1791 (retained at Ardkinglas), showing the new house set within a proposed picturesque parkland and with an inset showing the intended office court.

The small collection of drawings at the Soane comprises a classical design (1-3) matching that in the Ardkinglas portfolio, a castellated Gothic design (4) and designs for a lodge and stables (5). The first design reflects the influence of Playfair’s first continental tour in 1787 which refined his interest in a restrained neoclassical vocabulary and rigorous geometrical planning. The principal elevation and circular office court of Ardkinglas both anticipate Cairness House, employing his preferred pedimented tripartite windows and lunettes in a rusticated basement. The end bays make use of a tall astylar arch motif to group the windows over two floors (cf. the main breakfront of Playfair’s designs for Urie House) adding a subtle verticality and variation of plane to the composition. The most striking feature is the domed belvedere above the curving central staircase, which anticipates a similar tower at Roseneath House on the Firth of Clyde (begun c.1808 to designs by Alexander Nasmyth and Joseph Bonomi the Elder). McWilliam compares this to the work of Claude Nicholas Ledoux but there are similarities closer to home in Robert Adam’s tomb of David Hume in Edinburgh (1778), modelled on Roman mausolea. The fact that Playfair’s portfolio is titled ‘Marine Pavilion’ also suggests his awareness of Henry Holland’s work for the Prince Regent at the Marine Pavilion in Brighton (begun in 1787) where the building is likewise designed around a rotunda. The plans show a magnificent bifurcating staircase in the circular hall beneath, recalling the main staircase of Adam’s Home House on Portman Square (1770s).

Meanwhile, the Gothic design has a similar flavour to many of Playfair’s other castellated schemes, notably Kinnaird Castle, with round corner towers, stacked Gothic windows and a castellated porch. All of these have an affinity with Inveraray Castle, near Ardkinglas, which may here be the source of the Gothic belvedere tower (perhaps then classicised into the domed variant seen in the principal design). A reference on the drawing to accommodation in the ‘present castle’ suggests that this may be a proposal for rebuilding the old medieval structures at Ardkinglas. This would be in keeping with several of Playfair’s other projects where he offered clients the option to repair their old residence in the style of a castle or to have a new neoclassical house, the latter typically proposed on a fresh site.

Playfair’s commission at Ardkinglas seems to have petered out after Sir Alexander’s failure to win the Stirlingshire parliamentary campaign. After several months of petitions and appeals against the election results, he finally ceded defeat to his rival Sir Thomas Dundas on 14 March 1791 and Playfair’s journal makes a brief final mention of a day’s work on the project on 31 March. However, a year later Sir Alexander had ‘contracted with a builder to raise another [house] for the sum of between three and four thousand pounds’ (Heron). This house is shown in an engraving from around 1800: a plain seven-bay house with a central pedimented breakfront, described by Thomas Garnett in 1798 as ‘new, large, and convenient, but the architecture by no means elegant’. According to Garnett the remains of the old castle had now been demolished to make way for a new office court built shortly before his visit. This is clearly not the house originally proposed by Playfair, but there are strong similarities to some of his most austere classical houses (for example see the designs for an unknown house, SM 78/17/1-3). It is possible that the client ordered a budget metropolitan design from Playfair in London which he then had erected by a local builder (something Playfair complains about in his correspondence). The house was destroyed by fire in 1831 after which the offices were converted into a replacement residence.

The estate was bought from the Callanders of Craigforth (descendants of the Campbells of Ardkinglas) in 1905 by the ballistics expert Sir Andrew Noble. The present house is a masterful early-twentieth century Arts and Crafts mansion constructed for Noble to designs by Sir Robert Lorimer in 1906-1908.

Rory Lamb, 2025

Literature:
National Library of Scotland Adv.Ms/33/525: James Playfair’s Journal of Architecture, 1783-1791; J. Sinclair, The Statistical Account of Scotland (Edinburgh: William Creech), 1792, Volume III, 160-193; R. Heron, Observations made in a journey through the western counties of Scotland (Perth: W. Morison), 1799, Volume I, 334-335; T. Garnett, Observations on a tour through the Highlands (London: Cadell & Davies), 1800, Volume I, 74-75; J. Gordon, (ed.), The New Statistical Account of Scotland (Edinburgh: Blackwood & Sons), 1845, Volume VII, 711-718; C. McWilliam, ‘James Playfair’s designs for Ardkinglas, Argyll’ in H. Colvin, and J. Harris, (eds.), The Country Seat (London: Allen Lane), 1970, 193-198; National Galleries Scotland, Robert Scott: Ardkinlass, the seat of Sir Alexander Campbell, undated. Available at: https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/100904 [Accessed 16/07/2025]; Trove.scot, Ardkinglas and Strone: GDL00022. Available at: https://www.trove.scot/designation/GDL00022 [Accessed 16/07/2025]; Trove.scot, Ardkinglas House. Available at: https://www.trove.scot/place/141356 [Accessed 16/07/2025]