GENERAL REGISTER HOUSE - National Records of … · GENERAL REGISTER HOUSE ... GRH OPENING HOURS General Register House is open to the public, Monday to Friday, 9am – 4.30pm, except

GENERAL REGISTER HOUSE

NATIONAL RECORDS OF SCOTLAND


‘A PROPER REPOSITORY’General Register House was begun in 1774 to thedesigns of Robert Adam (1728-1792), a Scot whowas one of Britain’s greatest architects. It is notonly one of his finest public buildings, but also thefirst purpose-built public record repository in theBritish Isles. In fact it may be the oldest archivebuilding in the world that is still being used for itsoriginal function.

A proper home for Scotland’s public records wasfirst proposed in 1722, after the Treaty of Union of1707 guaranteed that the national records wouldremain in Scotland. However, for much of theeighteenth century Scotland’s national archiveswere housed in unsuitable accommodation inParliament House and other nearby buildings.Eventually, in 1765 a government grant of £12,000was made available from the forfeited Jacobiteestates for the building of ‘a proper repository’.The Register House Trustees only reachedagreement on a site when the City gifted thenecessary land at the north end of the new NorthBridge in 1769.


ADAM’S DESIGNLargely through the influence of Lord FrederickCampbell, the Lord Clerk Register, Robert Adamand his younger brother James, were appointedarchitects of Register House in 1772. The Adambrothers believed that you could judge a society by the quality and grandeur of its public buildings,and this commission provided an opportunity toput their beliefs into practice. While the building’sdesign went through several stages, the mainelements of the principal façade and thecentralised plan, consisting of a domed rotundawithin a quadrangle, were present from thebeginning. When the contract was signed in 1772the scheme was reduced in scale, probably forfinancial reasons, to the front (south) range androtunda, together with the front half of the eastand west ranges. The foundation stone was laid byCampbell on the 27 June 1774.

Robert directed the project from his London office,assisted by his Edinburgh-based elder brother, John,and James Salisbury, his clerk of works on site.While most of the work was undertaken by localcontractors and tradesmen, tight control over thedesign was maintained by the detailed drawingsand patterns that were supplied from London.


Work proceeded slowly, and the building’s unusualweight and solid construction were blamed for thedelays and rising costs. Despite extra funding of£2000 in 1778, building operations weresuspended in 1779. For six years the buildingremained an empty shell, leading the booksellerWilliam Creech to describe it in 1783 as ‘the mostmagnificent pigeon-house in Europe’.

With a final grant of £15,000 bringing the total costto £29,000, work resumed in 1785. Theprogramme included: finishing the ‘skylight’ in thedome; completing the four corner towers; pavingthe inner courtyards and the rotunda; constructingthe inside staircases; clearing away earth aroundthe building and surrounding it with a parapetwall; completing the brick arches in rooms andpassages; and finishing the ceiling of the rotundato Adam’s design. While the interior was mostlycompleted between 1785 and 1788, the plasteringand painting of the rotunda was only finished in1789.


Adam’s design incorporates special features tocounteract the traditional enemies of archives –fire and damp. As a fire-prevention measure, thebuilding was solidly constructed of stone with brickvaults. Stone flags were used for all the floors;only the Lord Clerk Register’s Room has a woodenfloor. The interior was simply finished, except forthe rotunda, and most of the rooms have plaintunnel vaults. While the individual offices had theirown fireplaces, heating the rotunda posed atechnical challenge. Adam opted for a typicallyRoman solution by constructing two flues in thefloor to carry hot air from four furnaces whichwere kept constantly burning in the basementbelow to protect the records from damp.

Besides supplying the need for a record repositorythe Register House was also built as a workingoffice to house government and legal officesconcerned with the creation of records. Clerks andrecord officials working for the Courts, Exchequer,Chancery and Public Registers were housed on allthree floors of the ranges surrounding therotunda. Staff began moving in with the records atthe end of 1787, but it did not open to the publicuntil 1788.


THE ‘ADAM DOME’The top-lit domed rotunda is the most importantroom in Register House. At 50 feet in diameter and80 feet in height, and with an area in excess of2000 square feet, it is also Adam’s highest andlargest surviving room. Inspired by the Pantheonin Rome, the only source of natural light is thecentral oculus, 15 feet in diameter. Originallydesigned as a public space giving access to differentareas of the building and for the storage of recordvolumes, it also served as a legal search roomfrom 1923 until 2007. The rotunda was renovatedin 2008 as part of the ScotlandsPeople Centre forfamily history research.

In 1785 Thomas Clayton junior, an Edinburgh-basedplasterer who had worked for Robert Adam atInveraray Castle, was awarded the contract forcompleting the plasterwork according to Adam’sdesign. The eight medallions were chosen inLondon by Adam himself, at a total cost of £33 12s.and were shipped to Edinburgh in 1786. Five ofthem are based on antique bas reliefs depictingRoman marriage and civic ceremonies, while theremaining three appear to be contemporarydesigns illustrating scenes from Greek myths andlegends. Their iconography is thereforeunconnected with the purpose of the building.Adam’s introduction of Scottish thistles into theanthemion frieze forming the first band of ceilingdecoration acknowledged the building’s nationalidentity.


We know from surviving accounts for painting therotunda ceiling that Adam’s original decorativescheme comprised a stone coloured (ie off-white)background, with the decorative details picked outin white. This scheme was confirmed byinvestigations by Historic Scotland conservators in2003 and 2007. They also established that the stonecolour was subtly shaded rather than flat, and thatthe background of the medallions and the plasterornaments around the oculus had been painted ina delicate blueish-grey shade. Stone colour wasalso used on the rotunda walls and throughout themost of the rest of the building. A sample ispreserved in the west lobby of the rotunda.

Adam favoured such monochromatic white and stone-coloured schemes for libraries and halls,usually reserving polychromy and gilding for thedrawing rooms and dining rooms of his greathouses. Successive redecorations of the rotundafrom the mid-nineteenth century onwards,however, gave rise to more colourful schemes,derived from what was then understood to be theAdam style, but lacking the sophistication of theoriginal. While the present decorative scheme,completed in 2008, closely follows Adam’s originalconcept, it also includes elements from laterversions, such as the gilding, which was firstintroduced in 1850.

The cast-iron railing surrounding the gallery wasdesigned by Adam, manufactured by Carron & Co.of Falkirk, and installed in 1788.


STATUE OF KING GEORGE IIIThe overlife-sized, standing statue of King George IIIin his coronation robes was commissioned in 1787 byLord Frederick Campbell from his niece the amateursculptor Anne Seymour Damer (1749-1828). It wasoriginally placed in the centre of the rotunda in1795. The gilt metal crown and sceptre are byVulliamy of London, the royal clockmaker, whosupplied the clock and wind dial for the building’sturrets. The statue was conserved in 2008.


THE SCREEN WALLCompleted in 1788, the screen wall originallyextended 40 feet in front of Register House andwas designed as a retaining wall and facing for thelandscaped terrace on which General RegisterHouse then sat. In the centre, flanked by the twosentry boxes, was a semi-circular stone staircase.While the decorated panels in artificial stone weresupplied from London by William Adam & Co in1787, the iron railings, gates, lamp standards andlamp irons were manufactured locally to Adam’sdesigns by Carron & Co. An underground passagerunning along the front of the building gave accessto basement coal cellars. The ‘moat’ was createdin 1820 when the earth was removed from behindthe screen wall to allow the cellars to be convertedinto record stores with windows to the front.

The narrowing of Leith Street following the erectionof the buildings in Waterloo Place in 1818 ledsome to regard the screen wall as an obstacle tothe free flow of traffic. In 1850, after much debate,the screen was moved back nine feet in line with thehouses in Princes Street in order to accommodatethe equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington(1769-1852). The statue, by Sir John Steell, wasunveiled on 18 June 1852 at a ceremony attendedby military veterans. Continuing problems withtraffic congestion eventually led in 1890 to the wallbeing moved back a further 24 feet to its presentposition. The semi-circular stair, which had alreadybeen modified in 1850, was squared off.


The original Adam lamps survived on the screenwall until 1953, although the style of lanternchanged over the years. The lamps were replacedby modern replicas in 2008.

LATER DEVELOPMENTSBetween 1822 and 1825 the quadrangle wascompleted to Adam’s plan but with a much simplifiednorth front by the Edinburgh architect, Robert Reid(1774-1865). Reid inserted the imposing stair tothe north of the rotunda, which leads to his enlargedcentral apartment for the storage and exhibition ofthe national records. This room opened to thepublic in 1847 as the Antiquarian Room, and isnow the Historical Search Room, where readersmay still consult the records. Immediately below isthe Reid Room, now part of the family historycentre.

A second rotunda, now known as the MathesonDome, was erected for record storage at the backof Register House in 1871. It was designed byRobert Matheson (1808-1877), the architect of NewRegister House, and was based on the circularreading room in the British Museum. Additionalaccommodation was provided for the Sasine Officebetween 1902 and 1904, when the Robertson Wingwas built in James Craig Walk. It is now part of theNational Records of Scotland.

John McLintock

© Crown copyright 2012

APS Group Scotland250917 12/12

GRH OPENING HOURSGeneral Register House is open to the public,Monday to Friday, 9am – 4.30pm,except for certain public holidays

All correspondence and enquiries should be sent to:

National Records of ScotlandHM General Register House2 Princes StreetEdinburghEH1 3YY

[email protected]: 0131 535 1314

The National Records of Scotland joins togetherthe former National Archives of Scotland (NAS)and the General Register Office for Scotland(GROS).

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GENERAL REGISTER HOUSE - National Records of … · GENERAL REGISTER HOUSE ... GRH OPENING HOURS General Register House is open to the public, Monday to Friday, 9am – 4.30pm, except