Close to Prestwick Airport, a few miles from Ayr, a handsome monument stands on high ground. It was erected in the middle of the eighteenth century to commemorate a local boy, of very humble beginnings, who had made a fortune in the service of the East India Company. The monument came close to total collapse before, hurrah, a local campaign secured its future.

Macrae is said to have left his native Ayr when little more than a boy and found work on boats leaving the busy port. He worked his way up the ranks to the influential position of Governor of Fort St George, a British power base at Madras (now Chennai) in India. In his time as Governor (he held the position from 1725-1730), Macrae ‘acquired a handsome Estate’, and he returned to Britain a wealthy man in around 1731. In 1736 he was said to be laying out his fortune in ‘purchasing Lands’ and this included an estate at Monkton, near Ayr, which he called Orangefield in honour of William III – Macrae also funded the erection of a statue of William of Orange in Glasgow in 1735.

Four years after Macrae’s death in June 1744, work began on his monument. No records have been found to explain the planning behind the structure – there is no inscription and the architect is unknown. We don’t even know who commissioned the monument, although Macrae’s sole heir and executor the Countess of Glencairn, née Elizabeth Maguire, seems likely. Whilst there has been speculation that the structure was intended as Macrae’s mausoleum, his will simply requests that he be ‘decently buried’.

John Swan began work on the monument in 1748, but the near complete structure is recorded as having collapsed the following year before being rebuilt in 1750 (and this is corroborated by the discovery of damaged stone in the rubble infill during the restoration). This information, the only early history of the monument the Flâneuse can find, is recorded in the second volume of James Paterson’s History of Ayr, published in 1852, and all later descriptions of the fine monument rely on his account.

A century after it was built surveyors mapping the county of Ayrshire noted ‘Macrae’s Monument’ as a ‘very prominent object’ (earlier maps simply mark the structure as ‘Monument’). It is unsurprising then that in the second half of the nineteenth century it was used as a landmark for the hunt, with many reports of the hounds and their prey racing by. Robert Bryden (1865-1939) took this view in 1912, and by that date the monument was ‘in a rather dilapidated condition’, although no major issues can be seen in his fine etching.

In 1967 an officer from the National Monuments Record of Scotland visited the site. He wrote that the ‘small pylonic monument’ was ‘well executed’ and noted the maritime motifs which featured on the four faces. There was however ‘considerable decay of the stonework’, although some repointing was underway when he visited.

These motifs include a shell, dolphins, a stylised castellated building on a rock, a trident and an anchor. Mr Hay’s detailed investigation of the monument took longer than expected, with an added delay caused by his Land Rover getting stuck in a stony patch. Disgruntled and hungry, he finished his report with the note ‘No lunch’.

The tower continued to decay, and by the end of the twentieth century it was in a most precarious condition, having been damaged in a storm. The monument was restored in the early years of the current century under the auspices of the Three Towers Trust working with Ayr-based ARPL Architects. There was strong support from the landowner, Glencara Estates, and from the local community, as well as funding from Historic Environment Scotland and the Heritage Lottery Fund. The obelisk had to be taken down to enable the rebuilding of the square base, and the shaft was re-erected once that had been consolidated.

Macrae was buried in Monkton churchyard, but no stone marks the spot (although a modern headstone records that he is interred somewhere in the churchyard). The story is told locally that a group of Macrae’s friends, in high spirits after a two-day drinking spree, exhumed his body from the churchyard and re-interred it in the newly-completed monument. Human remains of four adults and two children were found in the monument during the restoration work, but were thought to be of a later date. Like much else about the monument, the identity of those whose remains were found remains a mystery.

In the jet-setting 1940s Macrae’s former estate became home to Prestwick Airport, with the mansion as its centrepiece – Orangefield is probably the only country house to end its days with an air traffic control tower plonked on its roof. The building is sadly no more.

The monument (upgraded to Category A in 1994), was once a distant landmark, but is now on the edge of a new housing estate and is easy to reach from the road named…

The Flâneuse thanks Susan Kellerman for sharing her research into the monument, undertaken at the time of its restoration. Thanks also to Peter Drummond, of Peter Drummond Architects. Peter was part of the ARLP team at the time of the restoration.

UPDATE: thanks to John Malaiperuman for the fascinating observation that the monument echoes the tower and spire of the church of St Mary at Fort St George, a building that Macrae would have known well.

This is the 400th post to be published after 8 years of the Folly Flâneuse. Thank you for reading!

On a rocky stretch of shore at Achmelvich, in the remote Assynt district on the west coast of Scotland, is a little concrete structure. Built in the early 1950s, it is known today as the Hermit’s Castle and the tale is told that having erected a shelter in the form of miniature fortress, the builder spent only one night under its roof.

In fact locals remembered the builder as a sociable man rather than a hermit. His name was David Scott and he was apparently an architect from Norwich who loved this part of Scotland and ‘expressed a desire to build a retreat in keeping with the mood of the coast and mountains’. Scott built the curious structure as a bothy where he could spend the night after walking on the coast and sketching local scenes, and he saw the project as both a ‘practical exercise and artistic endeavour’. He carried the materials to the shore himself and furnished the interior with a stone bed, shelves for basics, and most importantly a fireplace for warmth. Scott is remembered as a frequent visitor in subsequent years.

Scott continued to keep in touch with villagers in the tiny hamlet of Achmelvich for some years after work took him to Norway and Greenland, but then the letters stopped and locals were left to wonder what had happened to the striking bearded figure who had become part of their community.

He had apparently left by 1956 when a visitor was taken to see the ‘hermit’s hut’ by a local boy. The boy explained that the hermit had spent many weeks hauling materials to the site, and had then spent a whole winter living in the structure. When the hermit moved on, the boy recounted, he left the key with the local crofters and asked them to let anyone who needed shelter use his former abode.

In the 1980s Gordon Bryan interviewed Achmelvich residents who wanted to ‘put the record straight’ as newspapers were repeating the inaccurate story that Scott only spent one night in the bothy. Bryan’s article about ‘One Man’s Castle’ was published in The Scot’s Magazine in 1986: it is an invaluable source for the true history of the curious coastal cabin, and one which the Folly Flâneuse gratefully acknowledges as her main source. Bryan ended by asking if any readers knew what became of David Scott, but there does not appear to have been any response.

The so-called Hermit’s Castle has been featured by the crime novelist Val McDermid. Inspired by the poet Norman MacCaig, who spent much time in the area and featured it in his work, McDermid visited Assynt. In her 2017 short story ‘Ancient and Modern’ her characters stumble across the incongruous ‘miniature fortress’:

‘Then we crested a shoulder of hillside and both stopped in our tracks. Ahead of us, on the edge of the cliff above a steep-backed inlet in the promontory was something so unexpected I wondered if I was hallucinating it. But a quick glance at Alan’s face told me he could see it too’

McDermid also featured the bothy in her 2004 novel The Torment of Others and in her 2019 book My Scotland.

The beach at Achmelvich is one of the recommended stops just off the North Coast 500, the popular circular driving tour of northern Scotland. This has brought more visitors to Achmelvich (although the Flâneuse expects many visitors leave without finding the bothy), and yet more repetitions of the myth that Scott was a recluse who only spent one night in Achmelvich, so it is good to once more put the record straight.

It is now almost 40 years since Bryan appealed for information about this fascinating man and his sui generis structure. The flâneuse’s more recent research has also drawn a blank (top marks to the librarian at the National Association of Norwegian Architects for replying to an email in under an hour). So over to you: if by chance you do know anything about an architect called David Scott, who practised in Norwich, loved Scotland, and worked at Dounreay power station and in Norway and Greenland, do please get in touch.

Val McDermid’s short story is from a collection called Bloody Scotland published by Historic Environment Scotland in 2017. ‘Ancient and Modern’ was published in the i newspaper and you can read it here https://inews.co.uk/culture/books/ancient-modern-val-mcdermid-short-story-bloody-scotland-crime-fiction-86913

The bothy is not listed, but it is on Historic Environment Scotland’s Buildings At Risk Register. It is marked on some map apps, but if you visit do just wander and get a little lost before you find it and enjoy the thrill of the chase.

After perhaps a little too much festive frowsting by the fire, the Folly Flâneuse is back in action. Best wishes to all readers for a fun, fit and folly-filled 2024.

Thank you for reading and please scroll down to the comments box at the bottom of the page to share any thoughts or further information.

Researching her recent post on the Monteath Mausoleum in the Scottish Borders, the Folly Flâneuse chanced upon a mention of a mausoleum at Windlestone, County Durham. Further investigation revealed that the Windlestone and Monteath mausolea are siblings, realised by the same architect and builder, at the same date. Sadly, whilst the Monteath mausoleum has been restored to its former glory, that at Windlestone was demolished late in the 20th century.

NB if you want to catch up on the Monteath Mausoleum read this post first: https://thefollyflaneuse.com/monteath-mausoleum-ancrum-borders/ 

Of the two burial places, the Monteath Mausoleum was the first born, with work commencing in 1864. It is interesting that Sir William chose J. Dick Peddie of Edinburgh as his architect, for although prolific in Scotland the Windlestone mausoleum seems to have been Peddie’s only English commission. Sir William may have been familiar with the plans for the Monteath Mausoleum, possibly from seeing Peddie’s design in the Royal Scottish Academy exhibition in spring 1865. He may also have been familiar with the new banking hall that Peddie had created for the Royal Bank of Scotland in Edinburgh. Opened in 1857, the extension to what had been Sir Laurence Dundas’s 18th century mansion in St Andrew’s Square was widely admired. The dome features 120 stars, and smaller versions of the design would soon feature in the plans for the Monteath and Eden mausolea.

Sir William commissioned Peddie to design a ‘chapel-tomb’ in which could rest the remains of his four children who had died in their infancy. In plan the building was cruciform, and like the Monteath structure it was surmounted with a dome pierced with star-shaped openings. Each arm of the cross was terminated with a pediment, that at the entrance being supported by columns. Advertisements were placed to recruit workmen in June 1765 and, as in Scotland, the work was superintended by James Harkness of Hawick, who must have found the commute to Durham somewhat more cumbersome. Tragically for Sir William and Lady Eden, two daughters died just before work began, and 12 year old Blanche and 8 year old Rose were buried together at the parish church in nearby Merrington until the vault was ready.

Peddie’s initial designs show that, as at the Monteath Mausoleum, sculpted angels were to watch over the dead, although at Windelstone there were to be four on the exterior of the building. They do not appear on the updated design of September 1865 and were probably never implemented.

The ‘mortuary chapel’ at Windlestone was consecrated in May 1868 and in July Sir William noted in his diary that ‘during the night the remains of our six dear children’ were moved into the new building from their previous resting places at St Helen’s, St Helen Auckland, and St John the Evangelist, Merrington. In the pediment was carved a child shepherd with his crook, and a small pelican tearing its breast to symbolise paternal piety. An inscription read ‘Ego sum pastor bonus et agnosco oves meas’: ‘I am the good shepherd and I know my sheep’. Sir William himself was interred there on his death in 1873.

Peddie was clearly proud of the building and a sectional view was published in The Builder in 1880. Two years later he showed a work called  ‘Windlestone Mausoleum’ at the Royal Scottish Academy exhibition, current whereabouts unknown.

In 1911 the gardens at Windlestone were in their prime and a later Sir William was praised as an ‘expert in horticulture’ who had created ‘numerous well-planned walks which are edged with beds filled with an astonishing variety of flowering plants’. Such a walk led to the chapel, as seen in the view above. Curiously it does not show the stars in the dome so either the roof  had been replaced, or it was never built to Peddie’s design. No descriptions have yet been found to provide any firm evidence.

Family financial problems, and the toll of the First World War, saw the estate slip into decline soon after the war ended. The most famous member of the family, Anthony Eden who was the British Prime Minster 1955-57, was born at Windlestone in 1897 and remained a frequent visitor. Eden visited his mother in the Dower House there at Christmas 1935, shortly after he had been made Foreign Secretary. They must have discussed the grave family news that Windlestone was to be sold the following year. The chapel and burial ground were exempt from the 1936 sale, but without the family present the mausoleum attracted the wrong kind of attention. In 1954 the building made headlines across Britain when thieves smashed their way into the underground vault. As they escaped with a lead-lined coffin the body of Robert Eden, who had died aged 9 in 1856, was exposed. The thieves, miners aged 21 and 15, escaped but were arrested when the body was discovered. Guilt got the better of the younger of the party and he confessed.

Further ‘disturbing incidents’ led Sir Timothy Eden, Anthony’s brother, to seek permission from the Diocese of Durham to demolish the chapel, which was now ‘almost ruinous’, and seal the vault. The faculty was granted in November 1957 and local builders were given the contract to start work. The memorial plaques were removed, and taken to Sir Timothy’s home in Hampshire for safekeeping, and the lead was stripped from the roof to deter thieves. The door to the vault was then securely sealed. Revisiting late in life the former prime minister Anthony Eden, now 1st earl of Avon, was shocked to see the mausoleum derelict: ‘I looked along the avenue that led to the chapel. Here was frank ruin. The building lay open to the sky…’

In 1983, accepting that the mausoleum remained a target for vandals, and was at risk from the elements, the Eden family began the process of arranging for the coffins to be removed to St Helen’s, Bishop Auckland. It took over a year to get permission from the Church of England, and then the Home Office, and moving the remains was one of the most unusual jobs handled by Sydney Pearson, Manager of the Co-operative Funeral Service of that town. On December 10th 1984 a short service was held at St Helen’s and the remains were reinterred in the churchyard underneath the east window. Lines from Longfellow, which had previously been on a memorial in the chapel, were added to one of the stones marking the graves:

Oh! not in cruelty, not in wrath
The Reaper came that day
An angel visited the green earth
And took the flowers away

The chapel was demolished to ground level soon after. St Helen’s, St Helen Auckland, is now the Eden resting place, and memorial plaques from the mausoleum have been returned to County Durham and can be seen in the porch. The gate piers from the entrance to the chapel, were given to the town of Rushyford by the Eden family, and re-erected at the entrance to the recreation ground on West Chilton Terrace.