The Glen (also known as Glen House)

http://portal.historic-scotland.gov.uk/hes/web/f?p=PORTAL:DESIGNATIONS:0

Type of Site

A virtually self-sufficient, later 19th-century estate, centred on a Baronial mansion with terraced and walled gardens by Bryce and Lorimer, and set within an attractive park and woodland landscape.

Location and Setting

The Glen designed landscape is situated along the enclosed upland valley of the Quair Water, some 5 miles (8km) south-west of Innerleithen. Moorland hills rise steeply from all sides of the policies, lending a dramatic, large-scale, 'remote' quality to the landscape. Views from the house and parks extend above the tree-line of policy plantations towards surrounding, heather and rough-grassland plateaux. The high ground is drained by several tributaries, including the Kill Burn, which flows through a small gorge past the house to meet the Quair. There are two small, artificial lochs in the designed landscape created during the mid-later 19th century, one to the north-east of the house, and the other, Loch Eddy, at the extreme south east. The designed landscape encompasses a total of 342ha (845ac). It is bounded by the outer edge of substantial plantation strips and woodlands, which serve to shelter the gardens, policy parkland, fields and estate village complex.

Landscape Components

Architectural Features

The designed landscape contains a high number of notable architectural features. The centrepiece is Glen House, a multi-bayed, Scottish Baronial mansion of coursed cream ashlar completed in 1858 to designs by David Bryce, with formidable six-storey tower added by Bryce in 1874. Considered an outstanding example of his work, the house displays typical flourishes, including crow-stepped gables and conical-roofed turrets with fish-scale slates. The drama of arrival is enhanced by Bryce's two-span entrance bridge and courtyard entrance with castellated archway. Other prominent Bryce elements around the house include the stable courtyard, with two-storey gabled entrance pend, and the formal terraced gardens (with some later work by Lorimer in 1905 and 1911). Accessed via a distinctive lion gateway, these gardens feature harled rubble terrace walls, steps and stone seats. They lead north to the former swimming pool and terrace area, developed on the site of earlier glasshouses in the mid 20th century, and sheltered by harled walling topped with ball-finials. Less than a kilometre to the south of the house, the temple is a survivor of earlier design work by William Playfair, 1822. Comprising a classical-style, former portico of an early farmhouse, it now serves as a Tennant family memorial with engraved glass by Luke Dickinson, 1997. To the west of the house, the early to mid-19th-century walled garden, (with significant alterations c.1909), incorporates a Mackenzie and Moncur lean-to style glasshouse and shed range. A row of nursery cottages stands opposite the shed range on the other side of a frame-yard, with the brick-built bases of the frames still intact. The concave east wall of this walled garden features round towers with conical roofs, one of which houses a timber-lined summerhouse. Further to the north, the rectangular-plan old walled garden, c.1857, was designed for kitchen produce and although derelict, retains a formal south entrance with ashlar gatepiers and decorative wrought-iron gates. Access to the designed landscape is via a crow-stepped entrance lodge and arch-way, dated 1858. From here, the estate road leads past a significant number of estate buildings and labourers' cottages, built mostly c.1860-90. Most notable among these are the kennels and house and old school house, while more centrally located features include the Glen Farm steading, with cart-shed, the Factor's House, the Garden Cottage, a pavilion-style piggery with dovecot tower, and the octagonal dairy. The estate road crosses the Kill Burn via an early-mid 19th century, single-span bridge (bridge near shrubbery), while the nearby, K6-type telephone kiosk was installed in 1935 for the use of the estate workers.

Drives and Approaches

The drive enters from the east, via the lodge and mid-19th-century arch-way. Referred to as 'the avenue' in an account of 1899 (The Gardeners' Chronicle 1899: 7), it follows a straight trajectory, ascending through fields and parkland past occasional conifer specimens and loose broadleaf clumps. The structure of tree cover around Glen House ensures that the house is concealed until near the point of arrival and the entrance bridge over Kill Burn; an almost certainly deliberate 19th century design feature intended to heighten impressions of scale and grandeur on arrival. The effect could have been enhanced by the sound of rushing water echoing over the manipulated Kill Burn watercourse below the bridge (Staempfli pers.comm. 2008). At the entrance to the designed landscape, an informal estate road diverts to the north, leading through woodland clumps towards the main farm and cottage buildings of the estate. It terminates at the head of the valley at the western limit of the designed landscape.

Parkland

Grazed valley parkland around Glen House retains much of its 19th century structure and provides an attractive landscape setting for the house and gardens. Many of the clumps and individual specimens mapped on the 1st Ordnance Survey (1855-58, OS 25' and 6') remain in place and have been supplemented by some later 20th-century replanting. The mix of species is varied and includes oak, elm, beech, lime and some conifers. The ornamental loch, by the entrance drive, and the planting design on the slope of Larch Knowe, to the south of Glen House, are of particular importance to core landscape views. This swathe of high, ascending parkland, visible on the opposite side of the Quair from the southern terraced gardens, features a good coverage of trees and offers a significant visual contrast with the bare moorland plateaux beyond. Written accounts applaud the aesthetics of the park, with the Gardeners' Chronicle referring to a 'sylvan retreat of endless variety and inexhaustible beauty' (1899: 7).

Woodland

Long strips of woodland around the perimeter of the designed landscape shelter the parks and outer fields, while larger hillside tracts, (Gentle's Wood, Fethan Wood, Larch Wood and Blairy Wood), are crucial to the landscape setting of the house and gardens. The general structure of the late 19th-century design is mostly intact (1897-8, OS 6'), and the combination of extensive tree cover, rolling terrain, and visual contrast with the bare hills beyond is vital to the overall scenic effect at The Glen. Although the balance of the plantations shifted overwhelmingly in favour of conifer cultivation during the 20th century, the last two decades have witnessed a much greater emphasis on broadleaf planting.

Water Features

Manipulation of the Quair Water and its tributaries began with the canalisation of a stretch of the Quair prior to the Tennants' arrival at The Glen, probably during the early decades of the 19th century. The straightened channel of water flows alongside the tree-lined avenue to the temple, located some distance to the south of Glen House. Closer to the house, the rills and falls of the Kill Burn were created during the later 19th century by head gardener Mr McIntyre, and were noted for the 'rippling and leaping music' they created (Gardeners' Chronicle 1899: 7). The two lochs, meanwhile, were created during the mid to later 19th century, the first being laid out in the northern park, to a 'fine picturesque effect' (Chambers 1864: 390), while the larger and more secluded Loch Eddy, with central island, was developed in the later 1880s (NAS GD510/1/69/10).

The Gardens

Terraced gardens by Bryce (1854), with additions by Lorimer (1905) extend from the south and west elevations of Glen House. Partly furnished with beds of rhododendron, azalea and Berberis at the close of the 19th century (Gardeners' Chronicle 1899: 7), the terraces are now generally maintained as more simple lawns, ornamented with topiary, and structured by the surviving 'hard' garden elements of straight walks, straight terrace walls, stone steps, urns, seats, and wrought iron gates. Of particular note are the large Irish Yews, over a century old, that line the main terrace paths to the west of the house. Despite the prevailing winds and relatively cold climate of this upland glen, suitable herbaceous plants are still cultivated along the borders of this garden, most notably below the sunken garden wall that defines the northern limit of the garden. While rough, grazed grassland now extends right up to the terraced gardens, historic photographs reveal greater expanses of immaculately maintained lawn.

Visible elements of former garden components include remnants of a small shrubbery to the north of the walled flower garden, and the original bowling green, a rectangular, sunken area in the lower, southern terrace. Grassed over since the later 20th century, it still bears the faint outline of later rose-beds curving around a central sundial (no longer present). Specimen trees growing just north of the entrance drive, meanwhile, include a sycamore planted by Gladstone in 1890.

Walled Garden

The irregularly-shaped Walled Flower Garden to the west of Glen House was developed from an existing mid-19th century garden enclosure, initially through the construction of glasshouse ranges (late 19th century), followed by later remodelling by Lorimer, c.1909. Unlike the more functional kitchen garden to the north, this garden was for display; a historical photograph, probably c.1900s, shows the main part of the garden with large, elaborate and densely-stocked flower beds curving across the lawn, behind which is the façade of an impressive glass-house range. Used for the cultivation of orchids, vines and other exotic fruits and flowers, the once substantial complex of glasshouses has now been reduced to only one complete Mackenzie and Moncur, lean-to range. Apart from this glass-house, the adjoining potting shed-range, nursery cottages, walls and towers of the east wall, (see architectural components), surviving structural elements within the garden today include stone steps and urns, and the deteriorating remnants of two other glasshouses. Apart from some minor horticultural work, this garden area remains unmaintained and disused.

Located to the north of the walled flower garden, the Walled Kitchen Garden, a high-walled, rectangular-plan enclosure is now derelict. Built c.1857, with the possible re-use of early 19th century gatepiers, it retains only the main structural features of steps, walling and entrance-ways. The interior of the garden is arranged over two levels and once featured long narrow glasshouse ranges along the northern, interior wall, which followed canted sides and terminated in pavilion-like structures (1855-8, OS 25'). Used to produce staple fruit and vegetables during the later 19th and earlier 20th century, the productive capacity of the garden was enriched early on by the addition of soil 'carted up from the valley' (Crathorne 1973: 124). Following the abandonment of horticultural production from the mid-20th century onwards, a small conifer plantation was established on the upper level of the garden. The remainder is disused.