Sir Samuel Hannay, 3rd Bt. (c.1742-90), was the second son of William Hannay of Kirkdale and his wife Margaret (née Johnston). Hannay had significant interests in both the City and in shipping, and cultivated a sizeable personal fortune, which he subsequently lost. On 4 November 1760, he married Mary (née Meade) the daughter of Dr Robert Meade of Teddington, with whom he had five sons and four daughters. In September 1783 he was made 3rd Baronet of Mochrum, as heir to Sir Robert Hannay the 1st Baronet, who had died in 1658, the title itself having been dormant since 1689.

He was elected MP for Camelford in 1784, standing in the interest of Sir Jonathan Phillips. Initially Hannay sided with the Pitt administration but moved to the opposition in 1788 as a result of the Regency crisis. He had interests in the City and in shipping and was one of the creditors of the Nawab of Arcot. He died suddenly on 11 December 1790 at his home in Portland Place, London. His obituary in The Gentleman’s Magazine notes Hannay as having formerly pursued a career as an eminent London chemist, and at the time of his death he was in partnership with one William Duncan, a chemist based in Philpot Lane. He was succeeded by his brother, Col. Alexander Hannay of the East India Company. Upon his death Hannay was reported to have owed £200,000, and as a result his brother Alexander was obliged to rescue the family estate.

Between 1786 and 1788, the Adam office made a series of designs for a house, stables, offices, farm range, brewhouse, bridge and cottage for Hannay. Most of these designs were grand and fanciful and those that were executed, were simplified to be more economical. Adam made at least three variant designs for the house and one of these variants was executed. However, the interior was not completed until after Robert Adam’s death. The house was gutted by a fire in 1893 and reconstructed by Kinnear & Peddie in a neo-Jacobean manner. The house has since been converted into apartments.

The bridge was also executed and there are two surviving variant designs for the bridge over Kirkdale Burn. The simpler design appears to have been executed in an even simpler form with no Doric frieze and made of rubble instead of ashlar. The bridge was widened to the south in 1857 by William McGowan and has since become redundant.

The remaining designs for the brewhouse, stables and offices, and cottage were not executed.

There is an octagonal farm range, known as the Kirkdale Mains, which dates from c.1790 and it has been suggested by Gifford, Rowan and King that this might have been built to an Adam design. There is one drawing, SM Adam volume 4/172, that King suggests is a preliminary design relating to this building. The Mains itself has been left in a poor condition and parts of it have since been demolished.

It has also been suggested by Gifford that the mausoleum on the estate, built for Hannay in 1787, might be an Adam design, however, there are no known surviving drawings in the Soane collection that relate to this building.

See also: Hill House, Putney Heath

Literature: A.T. Bolton, The Architecture of Robert and James Adam, Volume II, Index, 1922, pp. 20, 74; A. Rowan, Designs for Castles and Country Villas by Robert and James Adam, 1985, pp. 58-65; J. Gifford, Buildings of Scotland: Dumfries and Galloway, 1996, pp. 380-381; D. King, The Complete Works of Robert & James Adam and Unbuilt Adam, Volume 1, 2001, pp. 106, 138-9, 341-2; Volume 2, 2001, pp. 117, 127, 221, 240, 245, 258; A. McAlaney, ‘Hill House, Putney Heath’, Sir John Soane's Museum Collection, online, 2019 [accessed 9 February 2024]

Louisa Catt, 2024