MORE than a century ago, fire raged through Penicuik House for three days, destroying an architectural landmark of the Scottish Enlightenment.
The £6 million effort to transform those ruins got under way in earnest yesterday, with the restoration effort opened to the public to see traditional conservation skills at work.
Penicuik House, gutted by the fire in 1899, was one of Scotland's
finest classical homes, built in the Palladian style.
The consolidation of its ruins in a six-year project will make them safe to visit for the first time as a major new heritage attraction that includes the landscaped gardens.
At the same time the £6.3 million project, with Heritage Lottery Fund and Historic Scotland backing, is being used as a training and workshop programme in stone and conservation work. Up to 2,500 people will get training there.
James Simpson, a leading conservation architect, is handling the project. He
said: "The house has been a ruin since 1899. It's ruin consolidation, but one that provides access to the ruin, as it would to Melrose Abbey, or Tantallon Castle (in East Lothian], but this is an 18th Century House."
A new car park has now opened giving access to one of the earliest and most important designed landscapes in Scotland, with lakes and follies across nearly 400 acres. The grounds have been open to visitors for decades but will be made more "user-friendly".
"We want people to come and see the conservation process for themselves as the programme unrolls over the next six years," said the Penicuik House Preservation Trust chairman, James Dawnay.
Penicuik House was designed by Sir James Clerk, 3rd Baronet of Penicuik, and built in the 1760s. As the slow but unstoppable fire moved through the house, most of the pictures and furnitures were saved.
The Clerk family moved into the stable block, where they live today with those family heirlooms around them. The ruin and about 12 acres around it are owned by the Penicuik House Preservation Trust, and the family owns the rest of the land.
Mr Dawnay said: "The are three reasons why Penciuk is important: the architecture, the designed landscape in which it stands and the association of Scottish Enlightenment's leading figures with the building
"To conserve the roofless ruin of a great 18th century house on this scale has never been attempted before."
One building will be re-roofed to create workshops and a lecture room. Visitors to Penicuik House will be told how the Clerk family entertained such luminaries of the Enlightenment as Adam Smith, David Hume, and the architects the Adam brothers.
The full article contains 445 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
