Baldovie House is located on the north-eastern outskirts of Dundee and today forms part of the West Pitkerro industrial estate to the north of the road to Arbroath. In the late-eighteenth century, Baldovie was occupied by a family called Anderson, as is marked on John Ainslie’s <i> Map of the County of Forfar or Shire of Angus</i> (1794) and confirmed by Playfair’s drawings, journal and correspondence. It was for this property, not the larger estate called Baldovie in the parish of Kingoldrum near Kirriemuir, that Playfair was appointed to prepared designs in early 1785.

From the end of the sixteenth century, Baldovie was held by a family of Dundee burgesses called Clayhills and there was a mill there by the 1630s. In 1734, it was feued by the Town Council of Dundee for £333.6s.8d. to an Irish linen maker called Richard Holden who went on to establish a bleachfield alongside the mill on the east side of the Fithie Burn (the site of the Baldovie plash mill is shown on nineteenth-century maps and was in operation until the early-twentieth century). Holden was responsible for building (or at least improving) the house at Baldovie which still contains an inscription recording his work: ‘1734, RSH’. The estate and the mill complex were further improved by Holden’s successor, Alexander Johnston, a London goldsmith, in the 1760s and 1770s.

When Johnston died in 1781 the estate was advertised for sale, sporting ‘a neat commodious mansion-house, with a large court of office-houses lately built’ (Caledonian Mercury). The purchaser was Playfair’s client, Alexander Anderson, whose marriage contract dated in September 1782 describes him as ‘late of Madras’, indicating his return, perhaps newly enriched, from a colonial career. Anderson was one of several small landowners around Dundee who provided Playfair with early commissions through the encouragement of the architect’s friend and patron, Robert Graham of Fintry, who owned the nearby estate of Linlathen to the east of Baldovie. Playfair’s letters to Graham show that he was working concurrently on designs for Anderson’s neighbour David Fyffe of Drumgeith, although these do not appear to have survived. Thomas Mylne of Mylnefield, who had purchased the feu superiority of Baldovie in 1766 from the Town Council (making him effectively Anderson’s landlord), is also mentioned in both Playfair’s letters and journal.

The drawings for Baldovie in the Soane Museum comprise office copies of two schemes, produced over a six-week period in early 1785. Playfair had visited Baldovie during his trip to Scotland at the end of the previous year which had resulted in this and several other commissions in and around Dundee. The first scheme (drawings 1-3) is for a sizeable five-bay two-storey house with a generous service block to its rear and a courtyard beyond. The drawings show several features that would become common to Playfair’s style: stripped back neo-classical details, shallow hipped roofs and tripartite windows. Likewise, Playfair’s arrangement of the service spaces into an attached corridor range and rear courtyard reflects his early interest in rational planning and the desire to dignify these spaces as part of a grand overall design. In this design, the service corridor projects beyond the main house at either side giving the impression of flanking pavilions when viewed from the front, similar to Playfair’s later design for Cairness. This small set of plans and elevations was charged at £5.5s. Anderson inspected the drawings during a visit to London and Playfair recounted that ‘[although] exceedingly approved of however after much hesitation he begged me to endeavour to make another plan on a less expensive scale’.

The second scheme (drawings 4-12) dated April 1785 is the more modest proposal agreed upon, ‘the estimated expense where of being £1200’, which was subsequently worked up in more detail than the grander first design. It shows a three-bay house with a cambered bow front either side of the central doorway. The door and flanking ground-floor windows are all tripartite. Although not shown in the elevations, one plan suggests that a service corridor range similar to the first proposal was intended to span the rear of this design as well.

Alexander Anderson appears to have died suddenly in around May 1785, after which Playfair’s commission was abandoned and the bill for his drawings settled through the executors acting for Anderson’s young son, David. By the mid-1790s, a David Anderson ‘who had been in India’ (Warden – possibly confusing the father and son) had acquired the estate of Balgay on the west side of Dundee where the mansion-house was rebuilt c.1801. It is difficult to find reference to ‘David Anderson of Baldovie’ after 1800 and it is possible that Alexander’s son used their colonial fortune to establish a seat at Balgay instead of his father’s property at Baldovie. The eighteenth-century house at Baldovie still survives, now with a late-nineteenth century bow front and several twentieth-century additions, and has latterly been used as a community centre.

Rory Lamb, 2025

Literature:

National Library of Scotland Adv.Ms/33/525 – James Playfair, <i>Journal of Architecture</i>, 1783-1791; National Records of Scotland, GD151/11/32 – Letters from James Playfair to Robert Graham of Fintry, 1785-1791; National Register of Archives in Scotland, NRAS22 Bruce-Gardyne family of Middleton, Angus - Bundle 37: Marriage contract of Alexander Anderson and Amelia Gardyne, 17 September 1782; Caledonian Mercury (29 June 1782) ‘The Lands of Baldovie’, 4; Warden, A.J., <i>Angus or Forfarshire</i> (Dundee: C. Alexander & Co.), IV, 1880, 144-145, 190-191; Trove.scot, <i>Baldovie, Baldovie House, Including Boundary Wall.</i> Available at: https://www.trove.scot/designation/LB25734 [Accessed 22/07/2025]