The Scottish Baronial style was a 19th century revival of Scottish architectural forms taking its inspiration from the buildings of the Scottish Renaissance. In its 19th century form it is typified by the incorporation of architectural features such as crenellations, turreted bartisans, and oriels, and the use of massive hewn stone. The style was predominantly used for large country houses.

One of the principal motivations behind the development of the style was a new interest in the exploration of national identity. This had emerged from the intensifying demand for things, which were viewed as typically Scottish in the wake of George Fourth's visit to Scotland in 1822. By this time, Sir Walter Scott had made a decisive contribution to Baronial architecture in the building of his own house at Abbotsford, many of the elements of which anticipated the fully developed Scottish Baronial. The country had been without a native architectural language with which to respond to the romantic image of Scotland that had developed around Scott's novels. The idea that architecture should be refer to earlier forms was a new preoccupation, and the Scottish Baronial was seen as a great romantic expression of Scottish architectural nationalism and tradition, reflecting the patriotic imagery of the Highlands.

This view was strengthened in the mid-19th century, when Scotland flourished in the context of the world wide power of the British Empire. Confidence about national identity was at an all-time high and, responding to this, there developed a view that the nation itself could be a source of artistic creativity and that architectural styles should express 'national' characteristics. The Scottish Baronial style conveyed a romantic image of Scottish national identity and conformed to the image of a specifically 'national' architecture. The impetus was such that by 1848 Queen Victoria had acquired, and reconstructed, a Baronial mansion in the Highlands, at Balmoral.

The prosperity of the period also provided almost unlimited opportunities for country house building in the grand manner. The urge to build or remodel was strengthened by a growing awareness that improved building techniques and services meant that a comfortable and commodious house could be erected speedily and at moderate cost. The Scottish Baronial was also seen by both the established aristocracy and the newly rich Victorians as an architectural style which established lairdly credentials, particularly as it imitated the style adopted by the monarchy for their principal home in the Scottish Highlands.

The Scottish Baronial house was, therefore, an attempt to answer a specific demand in Scotland for new or enlarged houses in a historical style. Battlemented castle-style houses were considered appropriate to a Scottish setting in a way that those based on Classical motifs were not.

Between the castellated style which had evolved in the late 18th century and was typified by the Adam castle designs, and the emergence of the fully developed Scottish Baronial in the mid-nineteenth century, the most noteworthy stylistic trend in romantic country house architecture was that of 'Tudor' or 'Jacobethan', with large sunny windows and old-world detail. In time, a sharper historical aesthetic began to question what this revival of an English style had to do with Scotland. However, the arrival in Scotland of these romantic and Picturesque English revival styles was no doubt an influence on the development of the Scottish Baronial. The first attempts at Scottish Baronial tended merely to adapt the new English styles, grafting on Scottish details such as crowsteps and turrets. This was also part of a more general mid-19th century European interest in the revival of picturesque styles, which were considered to reflect national character.

STENHOUSE

William Burn was a key figure in beginning the transition to the Scottish Baronial. His designs for Milton Lockhart (1829) in Lanarkshire and Tynninghame (1830) were the first houses in the Scottish Baronial style with specific references to Scottish Renaissance castellated architecture through features such as bartizans and crowsteps. Burn's re-modelling of Stenhouse, Stirlingshire (1836) in which he had the advantage of much pre-existing sixteenth century detail was one of his most influential commissions. In 1837, at Invergowrie, Burn was using the elements of Baronial architecture with full confidence.

TYNNINGHAME

In 1844, William Burn commissioned English antiquarian, Robert William Billings, to record Scotland's historic architecture. The results were published in the four volumes of The Baronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Scotland in 1852, a series whose detailed drawings of 16th century Scottish castles acted as a pattern book for and provided a decisive inspiration to the Baronial movement. The increasing fluency in the handling of Scottish detail owed a great deal to Billings's drawings.

David Bryce, a partner in Burn's practice, is generally credited with the development of the mature Scottish Baronial style. He was a prolific designer, the number of his works exceeding 200. His popularity as an architect had much to do with his pragmatic approach to design. His aim was to provide a plan that would accord with the lifestyle of the mid-Victorian landed class, whilst the facade elements could be added or taken away to increase the Picturesque aspects or reduce costs.

Bryce's early Baronial houses of the 1840s, Seacliffe, Tollcross, Carradale and Cairnhill reflect a dependence on the forms developed by Burn with clear quotations from sixteenth and seventeenth Scottish houses. From the early 1850s the range of motifs which he used increased, the source of many being traceable to Billings's volumes.

Craigends, Renfrewshire (1857) was possibly Bryce's most spectacular Baronial house. The design employed one of the grandest versions of the Bryce gabled entrance tower heavily influenced by Fyvie Castle. Billings claimed that the architecture of the Scottish Renaissance had been influenced by the 'airy turrets and fantastic tracery of France', and from the mid 1850s, a Franco-Scottish Baronialism is evident in Bryce's work. These can be seen in his designs for Kinnaird Castle (1854) and Fettes College ((1864-70).

At the time of his death it was claimed that Bryce had virtually created the Scottish Baronial style. This claim is exaggerated as a number of Scottish architects including Burn, Robert Adam and Gillespie Graham had experimented with the style, but it was clearly Bryce who gave it currency and designed its grandest moments.

Such was the influence of the Scottish Baronial style that it was adapted from its more natural context of large country houses for use in an urban setting. From the 1850s it was used extensively as architectural camouflage for redevelopment schemes in Edinburgh's Old Town in street such as Jeffrey Street, St Marys Street and Cockburn Street. Its most dramatic and significant utilisation was for the later tenements of Marchmont.

COCKBURN STREET, EDINBURGH

There was a degree of continuity in the use of Baronial forms well into the 20th century, exemplified by the work of Anderson, Lorimer and Hurd. To Modernists, the Scottish Baronial seemed irrelevantly linked to an obsolete class, architecturally nationalist rather than international, and apparently contributing nothing to the evolution of modernity. However, a late flowering of the Scottish Baronial can be seen in the adoption of Baronial features in Ian Begg's late 20th century design for the facade of a hotel on a major gap site in Edinburgh's Old Town.

SCANDIC HOTEL, HIGH STREET, EDINBURGH