The Lawn - Riccarton House Estate
by Yvonne Johnstone
Title
The Lawn - Riccarton House Estate
Artist
Yvonne Johnstone
Medium
Photograph - Digitally Enhanced Photograph
Description
The lawn of Riccarton House, Riccarton Estate, Edinburgh, Scotland.
The earliest recorded reference to Riccarton or Richardstoun is from 1315 when King Robert the Bruce bestowed the land as a dowry on his daughter Marjory.
In 1480 the Wardlaw family held the lands and by 1508 they had been leased to the Hepburn family.
Lawyer Sir Thomas Craig bought the estate in 1605 and throughout the 17th century added much of the surrounding lands including Hermiston.
The beautiful landscaped parkland was first developed in the late 18th century by Thomas Craig who enclosed much of the land, and then by Sir James and Sir William Gibson-Craig. Both were avid collectors of plants and introduced the "sunken" part of the lawn which was a curling pond.
The house was extended in the 1820s to create an elegant mansion. Sadly, two sons then died in the Boer and First World Wars and the title and lands were split, the estate passing through the female line to the Sudlow family.
The house was commandeered by the Army in 1939, becoming the headquarters for the liberation of Norway and after the war a resettlement camp for ex-Prisoners of War and from 1947 to 1954 the headquarters for the Royal Artillery's 3rd Anti Aircraft Group. The house by this point was in quite state of disrepair and was demolished in 1956.
The Lawn today is a remnant of the 18th century pleasure gardens of Riccarton
House, now much simplified in layout and landscape maintenance.
It was used for croquet and echoed to the cries of the peacocks that once strutted the grounds.
The sundial was removed in 1956 when the house was demolished but the original plinth remains on the lawn.
The woodland surrounding the Lawn still contains several specimen trees from the collection and some of the exotic species are dated between 100 and 150 years old.
The oldest trees on the estate are the native or naturalised hardwoods of beech, ash, sycamore and particularly the Riccarton Sweet Chestnut (also known as the Spanish Chestnut) which is several centuries old and can be found at the southern edge of the Lawn.
Heriot Watt University acquired the estate in 1969 and the Golden Yew Tree drums and surrounding collection of specimen trees now make a wonderful backdrop to the University graduation ceremony garden party.
Uploaded
September 11th, 2020
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