INVERARAY
For centuries the seat of the Campbell Earls and Dukes of Argyll who constructed their castle here in the c15. Well placed for trade by land and sea, the town became a burgh of barony in 1472 and in 1648 a royal burgh. In 1743 the 3rd Duke succeeded to the estate, intent on improvements. The castle and town were razed. Demolition began in 1758 and was substantially completed in the period 1771—6. The irregular triangle of streets on the r. bank of the river between castle and loch all dispappeared. In their place, out of sight of the new castle and separated from the estate, the planned New Town of Inveraray gradually emerged. Progress was slow but by the end of the c18, Inveraray had invested in architectural assurance. No visit to the Highlands since has been complete without a sight of Inveraray’s bare black-and-white beauty.
The show piece is Front Street. It begins at the Dalmally Road where a high round-arch screen, [4]by Robert Mylne, 1787, crosses the carriageway linking buildings on each side. It is roughcast with blind portholes in the spandrels and lower flanking pedestrian arches. Set obliquely r. are the Inveraray Woollen Mill, formerly the Smithy, 1772, a three-bay dwelling with gabled eaves dormers and an outside stair on the s gable, and No. 4, 1752, the former Bakehouse; both with late c19 roofs. To the l., beginning the parade, The Great Inn.[3] By John Adam, 1750; design amended by amateur architect Harry Barclay of Colairny. Built by William Douglas, mason, and George Haswell, wright, 1751—5. Plain, nine-bay, three-storey front to loch, painted white with black dressings. A central segmental arch pend led to the stables court at the rear. The pend was later filled to form an entrance hall. Conservatory vestibule added c. 1900. On each side of this, wide blind arch recesses unite two window bays, a round-headed mock window between creating a broad Venetian arrangement. Semicircular s stair tower and three-storey sw wing with semicircular bow, both with semi-conical roofs, by John Tavish, mason, 1793—4, probably to a design of Robert Mylne.
Continuing the street parade, a five-bay arcade, harled with porthole openings and grey-green stone dressings, by Robert Mylne, 1787—8. The outer arches are blocked below impost height, the others railed and gated. The slightly higher central arch, which also advances, marks the axial entry to The Avenue, a straight estate walkway more than 1km. long, established in the late c17 and, until 1955—7, lined with beech. Next comes a symmetrical group of three harled gabled houses by John Adam, 1755—7. Higher, at the centre, the former Town House, [5]designed by John Adam, 1750, as part of his grand scheme for the white n edge of the town. Built 1754—7 by George Hunter. Harled, five-bay, three-storey n façade, given Palladian pretension by the slight advance of the central three bays under a holed pediment. A rusticated ground floor of grey-green, channelled ashlar schist emphasises this centrepiece. Its arcaded openings, built as a loggia with iron gratings, now frame an entrance door and flanking round-arch windows introduced in the early c19. The three central windows on the floors above have architraves. At first-floor level a broad, grey-green stringcourse crosses the façade. Linking the Town House to the arcade, Ivy House; on its e gable, Chamberlain’s House: both three-bay, two-storey, with piended attic dormers, a stringcourse at first-floor sill level and porches added later.
Across Main Street, another three-unit, gabled group. Here the centre is lower, a five-bay, two-storey house, 1759—60, harled with dressed quoins and surrounds, one of the best in Inveraray, built for the shipmaster Neil Gillies. Flanking this are two lower, three-bay dwellings built as manses, 1776, by Robert Mylne: that to the r. matches Chamberlain’s House; to the l., The Pier Shop, enhanced by a rusticated arched door with segmental fanlight but traduced by widened windows. s, round the corner, is The Poacher, c. 1880, harled but with tall gabled dormers, chimneys and parapeted canted bay in decorative ashlar. Built as a Public Reading Room and Coffee-House in memory of Elizabeth, Duchess of Argyll +1878; memorial tablet in curvilinear n gable.
If Front Street intrigues with alternating symmetries, Main Street is unequivocal. Straight and short, its axiality is potent. Glenaray and Inveraray Parish Church,[1] islanded halfway along the street, commands and contains the view. Centrepiece of the town, designed for the 5th Duke of Argyll by Robert Mylne, 1792, and built 1795—1802; re-roofed and steeple rebuilt 1837—8; recast internally 1898—9. A pedimented temple with portico façades to the n and s gables. Conceived as a double church housing Highland (Gaelic-speaking) and Lowland (English-speaking) congregations. The plan is thus symmetrical on both axes, the pulpits in back-to-back relationship against opposite sides of the base of a central steeple tower. The n and s fronts, which combine Arran freestone with panels of harling, are solid, except at each end where, under the full-width pediment, a single Tuscan column, part granite, part sandstone, is released as the façade recesses in an open corner. These columns, which have fluted necks, are echoed in half-columns attached to the lateral walls. The gables are divided into three bays by broad pilaster strips and have tall Venetian windows at the upper level, their surrounds and blind side lights of St Catherines stone. Below, the central entrance is a lintelled opening framed by Tuscan columns in antis. Blind segmental arch windows fill the bays l. and r. Above, in the ashlar tympanum, a circular recess is swagged by a low relief moulding which subtly suggests an inner pediment related to the central bay.
Gabled houses, all but identical, flank the entry from Front Street. Thereafter there is a general consistency of form and scale on both sides of the street. Gable-to-gable dwellings, 1755—80, are three or two storeys to the eaves with attic dormers, shop cornices repeat intermittently, walls are harled white with black-painted margins. Here and there, a Gibbsian detail; notably in the five-bay house, 1755—6, towards the s end of the w side of the street. Mid-street on the e side, a wide, three-storey tenement, Silvercraigs’s House,[8] 1773—80, with in-and-out quoins, an elliptical-arch pend and a central chimney gable. Ending the e side is the George Hotel[11]. Built 1777—9 by Robert Mylne as two large contiguous houses which accommodated the Highland and Lowland congregations until the completion of the Parish Church, the s house became a hotel in the 1820s, the n in 1954. Stepped tripartite windows l. and r. of the n entrance; characteristic Mylne porthole in the s gable. Across the street, the aberrant single-storey apothecary, late c18; one door, one window, wonderful.
On the w of Church Square, the Royal Bank, dated 1865, three storeys of square-snecked rubble and ashlar with tripartite windows at first floor and a central chimneyed gable above. Beside it, more tripartites in the three-gabled front of the former Grammar School, [7]1905—7, by E. J. Sim. Converted to a Community Hall, 1970. Behind, across The Avenue, is All Saints’ Church,[2] by Wardrop & Anderson 1885-6. First Pointed Gothic in pink granite rubble with pink Ayrshire freestone dressings. Nave and chancel under one roof. Standing separate from the church, hugely and controversially tall at 38m., is the Gothic Duke’s Tower, 1923-31 by Hoare & Wheeler, erected as a memorial to Campbells killed in World War I. Square in plan and built without butresses in pink granite rubble; dressings and half-octagon engaged stair tower of red Ballochmyle sandstone. Axially placed on the e side of the Square, a pink granite bowl fountain with a round obelisk stoup; by J. & G. Mossman, 1893. Bank of Scotland, mid c19, single-storey, harled and very domestic with exposed spars at the eaves. Higher and grander, the black-and-white Bank Manager’s House, late c18, dormer storey added late c19; railed steps to a central corniced door with bipartite windows l., r. and above. Closing the axis e, the classical façade of the former Court House.[14] Designed by James Gillespie Graham, 1813, following a proposal by Robert Reid, 1807—8. Built 1816—20 by William Lumsden and James Peddie of Leith. Very much a stage-set façade, the three-storey w elevation fronts the court-room, offices and jail which superseded those of the Town House,(see above) at the same time providing a grandly symmetrical closure to the town’s cross-axial plan. Above the rusticated ground storey, first and second floors are absorbed in a high piano nobile of sandstone ashlar. Tuscan pilasters, coupled at the margins of the centrepiece but single in the outer bays, define a classic tripartite composition. At its heart is a large Venetian window distinctly reminiscent of Robert Adam, its Tuscan column mullions carrying a lintel which continues as a moulded stringcourse across the façade. This horizontal stress reverberates in the entablature above (there is no pediment) and in the parapet, which is solid but fluted in the middle and balustraded in the flanks. Barely visible is a shallow hipped roof. Symmetrical plan with a central scale-and-platt stair.
Lanes lead l. and r. of the Court House. n, overlooking the loch, is Factory Land,[13] 1774, a white vernacular range with small window openings. Built by the mason John Marr, it provided an upper-floor workroom with dwellings below in what was once the industrial quarter of the town but is now picturesquely residential in an austere Scottish way. Beside it, Ferry Land,[12] 1777, three-storey, piended, with a rear forestair; erected when the woollen factory moved to Claonairigh. Both buildings restored by Ian G. Lindsay, 1960. Beyond this is Fernpoint Hotel, 1752—3, a detached, two-storey, piend-roofed house built at an oblique angle conforming to John Adam’s superseded 1750 plan for the town. Timber doorpiece with Doric columns and pediment projects from conically roofed w stair tower. s of the Court House is the snecked rubble front of the former police station, Crown Point House, 1869—71. Then, two more vernacular ranges, obliquely set parallel to the shore: Crombie’s Land, 1822—5, restored by Ian G. Lindsay, 1959, a two-storey, flatted range of three-bay dwellings, one of them the birthplace of the novelist Neil Munro (1863—1930), and Fisher Row, single-storey, rebuilt by Lindsay 1962.
Main Street continues s, its brief axis dominated by the portico of what was the Gaelic-speaking half of the town’s double kirk. Two white-harled, three-storey tenement ranges, both designed by Robert Mylne, impart a severe coherence to the short street. Fifteen windows long at the upper levels, each consists of five three-bay, flatted units. Above the eaves, broad chimney stacks articulate the perspective. At pavement level, five close-entries lead through the blocks to access stairs at the rear. On the e, devoid of stone dressings, Relief Land, built for labourers by the mason John Brown, 1775—6. Through the closes, dog-leg-reinforced concrete stairs, constructed during the 1950s renovation by Lindsay, give access to the upper flats. On the w is Arkland, [15]1774—5, erected by John Marr, mason, marginally less dour by virtue of its black-painted, Dumbarton stone surrounds. At the rear, piend-roofed stair projections. Here, along Back Lane, are several piended, rubble outhouses, late c18, and Arkland II, late c18, a harled house of brutal but compelling simplicity. Beyond Mylne’s tenements, Main Street is one-sided, a shore road open to the loch on the e. Still black-and-white, Black’s Land, c. 1777 and MacKenzie’s Land (formerly McCallum’s Land), 1775, drop the scale. A segmental arch links to Cross Houses, 1776—7, restored c. 1958, three harled cottages with a deeply coved eaves and hipped dormers added late c19, the row set at right angles to the street.
