page_title: William Bruce (architect)
section_title: Country houses
hierarchical_section_title: William Bruce (architect) / Architectural works / Country houses
caption_attribution_description: w:Hopetoun House, near South Queensferry, Scotland. Detail of west or garden front, designed by Sir William Bruce.
context_page_description: Sir William Bruce of Kinross, 1st Baronet, was a Scottish gentleman-architect, "the effective founder of classical architecture in Scotland," as Howard Colvin observes. As a key figure in introducing the Palladian style into Scotland, he has been compared to the pioneering English architects Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren, and to the contemporaneous introducers of French style in English domestic architecture, Hugh May and Sir Roger Pratt.
  Bruce was a merchant in Rotterdam during the 1650s, and played a role in the Restoration of Charles II in 1659. He carried messages between the exiled king and General Monck, and his loyalty to the king was rewarded with lucrative official appointments, including that of Surveyor General of the King's Works in Scotland, effectively making Bruce the "king's architect". His patrons included John Maitland, 1st Duke of Lauderdale, the most powerful man in Scotland at that time, and Bruce rose to become a member of Parliament, and briefly sat on the Scottish Privy Council.
  Despite his lack of technical expertise, Bruce became the most prominent architect of his time in Scotland.
context_section_description: His first commission for a new building was for the construction of Dunkeld House, and came from the Earl of Atholl in 1676. The house had been badly damaged in 1654, during the civil war, and Bruce was given the task of building its replacement. (The house was later demolished). Another early full-scale commission was for Moncrieffe House (1679), which burned down in 1957. 
  In 1675, Bruce bought the estate of Loch Leven from the Earl of Morton. The estate included an old manor near Kinross, as well as the ruins of Loch Leven Castle, famous as the jail of Mary, Queen of Scots. After carrying out repairs on the old manor, and beginning to lay out the gardens, Bruce began work on his new home, Kinross House, in 1686, employing master mason Thomas Bauchop. The Palladian building bears some resemblance to Roger Pratt's Coleshill House of 1660 (demolished), but with features Bruce derived from French sources. These features, ultimately classical and Italian in origin, include the rusticated basement stonework, and the giant order of corinthian pilasters, the latter possibly deriving from Bernini's first designs for the Louvre. Following Bruce's fall from favour, he found himself increasingly in debt, which delayed the completion of the house until 1693. Kinross was one of the earliest Palladian-style country houses in Scotland, and was recognised as one of the finest buildings in the country; Daniel Defoe described it as "the most beautiful and regular piece of Architecture in Scotland", and Thomas Pennant called Kinross "the first good house of regular architecture in North Britain".
  Despite William Bruce's fall from political favour, and his intermittent imprisonment, he continued to practice. During the 1690s he completed Hill of Tarvit (1696), Craighall (1697–99) in Fife, and Craigiehall (1699) near Edinburgh. The latter, built for the Marquess of Annandale, still stands, and is used as the British Army's Scottish headquarters. From 1698 he was working on a new house for the young Charles Hope, later first Earl of Hopetoun. Hopetoun House, near Edinburgh, was completed in 1702, and represents Bruce's grandest country house design. The master mason was again Thomas Bauchop, and the inspiration was again Anglo-Dutch, with French rustication. The bulk of Bruce's work is now obscured by 18th-century remodelling, carried out by William Adam. Bruce was commissioned again by Hopetoun in 1708, to build a private aisle at Abercorn Kirk. The Hopetoun Loft overlooks the interior of the kirk, and connects to a retiring room with an oval "squint" giving a view of the pulpit.
  In 1702 Bruce was commissioned by the burgesses of Stirling to design a new tolbooth for the town. Bruce provided only sketch plans, which were executed by local masons between 1703 and 1705. Bruce's last country houses were Harden House (now known as Mertoun House), built for the Scotts in the Borders, and his smallest house, Auchendinny in Midlothian. His final work, in around 1710, was for Nairne House, for the Jacobite Lord Nairne. The house was not completed until two years after Bruce's death, and the extent of his involvement is unclear. Nairne House was demolished in 1760, although the cupola was retained and installed on the roof of the King James VI Hospital in nearby Perth.
caption: The west front of Hopetoun, which was designed by Bruce for Charles Hope. The east front was enlarged and remodelled by William Adam.
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