Inch House, Edinburgh

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Coordinates: 55°55′29″N 3°09′32″W / 55.924808°N 3.158817°W / 55.924808; -3.158817
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Inch House
Inch House, south-east facade. The original tower is on the right and the west wing is on the left.
Coordinates55°55′29″N 3°09′32″W / 55.924808°N 3.158817°W / 55.924808; -3.158817
Built1617-1892
ArchitectGeorge Smith (1841)
MacGibbon & Ross (1891)
OwnerCity of Edinburgh Council
Listed Building – Category A
Designated14 July 1966
Reference no.LB28078
Inch House, Edinburgh is located in Edinburgh
Inch House, Edinburgh
Location of Inch House in Edinburgh

Inch House, a former country house situated within

Edinburgh Corporation
in 1945. Since then it has been used as a primary school and more recently as a community centre.

Origins and ownership

The word ‘Inch’ derives from the Scots Gaelic ‘innis’ which can mean either 'island' or a dry area within marshland or a river meadow.

Edinburgh Corporation in 1946.[6] It was then used as a primary school with some of the children moving to the newly built Liberton Primary School in 1956. The remaining pupils were those of St John Vianney Roman Catholic Primary School, and these pupils finally moved to a new school in 1968. The house subsequently became a community centre.[6]

Sir John Gilmour bought Inch House in 1660.
Inch House, south-west facade. The west wing, modified in 1890–92, and with its charmless modern fire escape, is on the right.

17th century

In 1607 James Winram (father of George Winram, Lord Liberton) bought the Nether Liberton lands which included the Inch estate. He commissioned the building of Inch House which was originally an L-shaped tower, completed in 1617.[10] The doorway with the date 1617 embossed on the lintel is still present, but due to later alterations, is now entirely internal. New features were added in 1634. A large doorway was built in the internal angle of the ‘L’ to form a grand entrance leading to a wide spiral staircase. Also in 1634 a two-storey north-east wing was added to the tower.[7]

18th and 19th centuries

Western approach driveway to Inch House

Sir John Gilmour of Craigmillar had also bought

Sir Robert Gordon Gilmour (1857-1939) inherited the house and in 1889 married Lady Susan Lygon (1870-1962), and they planned a major series of internal and external alterations which took place between 1890 and 1892. They commissioned the leading historical architectural firm MacGibbon and Ross, who had published a major historical survey of Scotland's towers and stately homes entitled The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries,[13] They were asked by the Gordon Gilmours to make the entrance to the house grander and more impressive and to make the house more comfortable for late 19th century living. MacGibbon and Ross achieved this while retaining much of the earlier historic character of the building. The modernisation and embellishment included enhancing the main entrance by creating an elaborate pilastered and pedimented porch, above which is inscribed the Gilmour family motto ‘Nil Penna Sed Usus’ ('the practice not the penmanship'). This doorway led to a grand entrance hallway and staircase. A fire destroyed this staircase in 1979, and it was replaced with one in a similar style. There were also external and internal modifications made to the 18th century west wing. The internal modifications included enlarging ground floor and first floor rooms by removing internal walls, enlarging windows, creating west-facing bay windows and stripping the plasterwork in the ground floor room of the tower to make the original stonework a feature. Externally the west wing was made to look grander with the addition of angle turrets and dormer windows.[1] There was further major expansion of the building at this time with the addition of a north wing which resulted in the formation of an inner courtyard. The 1890 modifications also included building a chimney on the original tower building to vent a very large fireplace created in the ground floor.[1]

20th century

Inch House was bought in 1946 by the then

Edinburgh Corporation. It was used as a primary school, and the courtyard was roofed over to form a dining room. Some pupils transferred in 1956 to the nearby purpose-built Liberton Primary School. The remaining primary school, St John Vianney Roman Catholic Primary school, was transferred to a newly built school of the same name in nearby Ivanhoe Crescent in 1968.[6] The building has since become a community centre. A brutalist-style fire escape was added to the wall of the west wing around 1970. The Inch Community Centre uses many of the rooms in the house including general purpose rooms, music rehearsal rooms, areas for arts and crafts, a photography room, a kitchen and an office.[14] The centre runs a variety of activities, classes and clubs.[14][15]

Plan of Inch House showing original tower house and subsequent additions

Description

Inch House is located in the south of Edinburgh, two miles south east of the city centre. The district is now known as The Inch and contains Inch Park and the Inch housing development. Access from the west is by a roadway off Gilmerton Road, through the original west gate of the property. Access from the east is from Old Dalkeith Road by a roadway which skirts the northern boundary of the City of Edinburgh Council's Inch plant nursery and horticultural training centre, formerly the walled garden of Inch House. Originally a tower house, several major additions have been made to the building over the centuries.[13]

The seventeenth-century tower house

The original L-shaped tower dates from 1617. The wide staircase added at the re-entrant angle of the tower in 1634 was an unusual feature in towers of this period. The large doorway, created on the north side of the tower at the same time, is now internal as a result of later additions. The lintel carries the date 1617, the motto "Blessed be God" above the initials James Winram (IW) and his wife Jean Swinton (JS). The ground-floor room, originally a vault or cellar, occupies the entire breadth of the tower. It has a barrel-vaulted ceiling, and the original stonework is now revealed as a feature. There are smaller rooms on the second and third floors from where a turret stair leads to a roof area which commands panoramic views.[7][8][12]

The north-east wing

This three-storey extension, added in 1634, connects the tower block to the north wing. On the west external wall above two windows are the initials 'IW' and 'IS', again representing James Winram and Jean Swinton. The date 1634 is inscribed on one of the dormers.[10][13]

The west wing

The two-storey west wing was built in the 1790s and was modified internally and externally in 1891–92. The large room on the ground floor is of a similar size to the equivalent room in the tower house, while the first floor also has a large room of similar size along the length of the wing. Both these rooms have large bay windows added in 1892. Third-floor rooms are smaller and feature dormer windows added in 1891–92.[10][13]

The north wing

Added in 1892, this wing consists of smaller rooms used in the past as residential quarters for staff and later for school staff.[8][10]

 References

  1. ^ a b c "Inch House, Glenallan Drive, Old Dalkeith Road And Gilmerton Road (LB28078)". portal.historicenvironment.scot. Retrieved 19 April 2019.
  2. ^ "innis - Scottish Gaelic-English Dictionary". Glosbe. Retrieved 19 April 2019.
  3. ^ "Gaelic Place-Names: 'Eilean' and 'Innis'". The Bottle Imp. 1 November 2012. Retrieved 5 May 2019.
  4. ^ Old Edinburgh Club (1917). The book of the Old Edinburgh Club. Edinburgh : The Old Edinburgh Club. pp. 3.
  5. ^ "Forrester of Corstorphine, Lord (S, 1633)". www.cracroftspeerage.co.uk. Retrieved 19 April 2019.
  6. ^ a b c d "Inch House - A Brief History - South Edinburgh Net :: South Edinburgh's Community Network". www.southedinburgh.net. Retrieved 19 April 2019.
  7. ^ a b c Sweet, Andy. "Inch House | Castle in Edinburgh, Midlothian | Stravaiging around Scotland". Retrieved 19 April 2019.
  8. ^
    OCLC 13328161
    .
  9. ^
    ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. Retrieved 5 May 2019. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  10. ^
    ISBN 978-1-899874-27-9
    .
  11. ISBN 0952521954
    .
  12. ^ a b The City of Edinburgh Council. "Gardens and Designed Landscapes site reports | The City of Edinburgh Council". www.edinburgh.gov.uk. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  13. ^ a b c d MacGibbon, David; Ross, Thomas (1887). The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth century. Vol. 3. Edinburgh: David Douglas. pp. 528-531.
  14. ^ a b "Inch Community Education Centre". www.evocredbook.org.uk. Retrieved 1 May 2019.
  15. ^ "Inch Community Centre - South Edinburgh Net :: South Edinburgh's Community Network". www.southedinburgh.net. Retrieved 1 May 2019.

Further reading

  • Coventry, Martin (2001) The Castles of Scotland. Goblinshead, Musselburgh
  • McKean, Charles, with David Walker (1982) Edinburgh: An Illustrated Architectural Guide. RIAS Publications, Edinburgh
  • Wallace, Joyce M. (1998) The Historic Houses of Edinburgh. John Donald Publishers Ltd., Edinburgh
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