Architecture
Baltersan is a Category A-Listed building putting it in the top 8% of Scotland's inventory of historic buildings of high merit. Although a modest tower-house it contains a number of rare and perhaps unique features which justify its listing.
On plan, it is a typical L-shape with the main staircase wing in the smaller leg of the L. This was a 16th c. development of the basic keep which, although common throughout Europe, achieved its greatest range of variants in Scotland. By the mid-17th c. country house fashion changed in favour of the horizontal and symmetrical instead of the vertical and asymmetrical.
The 15th c. keep was simply a stack of apartments, one above the other with the turnpike stair acting as a vertical corridor. Walls were generally about 6 feet thick (2 metres) but thinned slightly and progressively in each upper floor as less weight had to be borne. By the middle of the 16th c. walls had reduced to four feet thick at lower levels, ground floor cellars were linked by a service corridor and floors above the Hall (piano nobile) were divided into two apartments. Staircase wings and both round and square towers were being added to create a range of ground plans in the general shape of the letters L, T and Z.
In the final quarter of the 16th c. masons were excelling themselves in contriving delightful confections of corbelled turrets, caphouses and crowstepped gables, giving us the distinctive Scottish baronial style. This became more and more elaborate, reaching its zenith at Craigievar in Aberdeenshire. Also in that county we find Leslie Castle, recognised as the last tower-house to be built in Scotland, although the Scot's attachment to this building form never died and some have even been built in the last 30 years.
Baltersan dates from the middle to the last quarter of the 16th c. Perhaps a deeper study of charter evidence will yield the key sentence that will allow a more positive dating. Considering that it was the home of a Guidman (rank below a Laird) who owned a comparatively small estate, it has a quality of carved stonework rarely found in a building of this scale. Profiles of these moulded stones were made by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historic Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) and may be examined at their Edinburgh offices along with photographs of Baltersan.
Ingleneuk seat and sliding shutters
Two of the most remarkable features of Baltersan can be found at the third level which would have housed the principal bed chambers. In the south-east corner is a fireside (ingleneuk) seat which caught the attention of Charles Rennie Mackintosh in 1895. Next to it is a window, one of two large windows in the south wall, which once had sliding shutters. Because all window openings were barred for security, shutters would have had to open inwards. In the case of these two, the shutters slid sideways into the wall thickness.
Although a common feature in towns of the period, noticeably Edinburgh, they were placed on the outside walls. The next date that this architectural device is encountered in Scotland is in a sea captain's 18th c. house in Dundee. Baltersan was inhabited by a sea captain in the 1750s, Hugh Arbuthnot whose family name was strongest in the region north of Dundee. Was there a connection?
Download PDF (462KB): Ingleneuk Shutters
Download (text only) historical and architectural account published in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 2000, vol. 130.
Arch Hist PSAS (MS Word 74KB)
Further reading:
The Scottish Chateau: the Country House of Renaissance Scotland
by Charles McKean
Sutton Publishing, 2001 ISBN 0-750-92323-7
Lavishly illustrated, easily the best book on the subject.
Available through Amazon.co.uk
Fensterlæden: Funktion, Konstruktion und Gestaltung
by Andrea & Winfried Hänel
Published 2005 by Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt München
ISBN 3-421-03485-0
Available through Amazon.de
Front cover and inside page on Baltersan:
