Old Moray House: Architecture

(Old) Moray House was built around 1618 by Mary, Countess of Home. The architect of the house is not known. This page will give a description of architectural features of the house.

The principal entrance to the house from the Canongate was the handsome gate with its massive rounded pillars surmounted by triangular stone obelisks. The door into the house was at the base of the octagonal stone stair tower on its west wall. The stair ends with a wooden balustrade, the newel post of which extends as a column supporting a saucer shaped ceiling with fine plaster work.

This stair still leads to the two principal first floor rooms of the original house.

The Cromwell and Balcony rooms

The smaller south facing room is now called the Cromwell Room, and the larger room the Balcony Room. These were probably the original dining and drawing rooms. Both rooms retain their original beautiful vaulted plaster ceilings. Such ceilings were particularly popular at the end of the 16th century and during the first half of the 17th century. The Cromwell Room's ceiling is divided into small panels each containing low reliefs of animals, flowers, figures, or heraldic beasts. Around the walls are 18th century paintings, the work of the French painter William Delacour.

The Balcony Room ceiling has substantial strapwork with panels containing a wide variety of motifs. Unusually, its ribs meet at a central pendant, with smaller pendants punctuating the ribs half way up.

The external layout

The current Old Moray House developed from a group of three buildings of different ages originally grouped around a small courtyard. The earliest building was Mary, Countess of Home's 1618 mansion. The Regent's House to the east followed, probably before 1647. Finally the New House was built to the south in 1755.

Old Moray House, although much altered by its occupants down the centuries, is one of the few remaining original aristocratic houses built in the Canongate in the 16th and 17th century. An early print shows that the small internal close or courtyard was entered from the Canongate through a pend. The close opened in the south east corner to the garden. At one time the close was covered by an ornate 'lantern'. The pend has since disappeared and the close has now become the central stairwell. The same print also shows dormer windows in the north roof, which have been removed at some stage.

The Reverend James Gordon's map of 1647 shows the gateway from the Canongate and the close surrounded by buildings. Edgar's map, which was the first properly surveyed map of Edinburgh, (as revised 1765?) shows the three houses making up 'Old Moray House'. It also depicts the garden and Summer House. Mary, Countess Dowager Home's Garden was almost as famous as the house itself and for many years after it had become the property of the Earl of Moray was still known as 'Lady Home's Garden'.