Mavisbank House

This is the front elevation of Mavisbank House, the perfect creation of Sir John Clerk and William Adam. Construction started in 1723, making it the first significant Palladian country House in Scotland and the model for what followed. In the 1880s it became a mental hospital and in the 1940s the hospital supervisor bought it as his family home when the hospital closed.

In the 1950s it was purchased by local car breaker Archie Stevenson, whose wilful neglect brought Mavisbank to an all-time low - including the mysterious fire in 1973 which gutted the building. Stevenson's mischief making went a step further when he left it to three apparently fictitious relatives, and the legal puzzle that ensued would have amused him but has contributed further to its decline, though the effects of subsidence caused by local coal mining are not to be underestimated.

Nor do the statutory bodies have a glowing record on Mavisbank. It took the combined powers of the then Scottish Development Department and the Lothian Building Preservation Trust to instigate a legal action to prevent the local authority from demolishing it.

This was my first visit to Mavisbank for some years and its state must be approaching critical. We were warned not to step within three metres of the building, and that says it all.


Nikon D800 + 24-85 zoom