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Summary

Description

Alexander Miller, carpenter, and Hugh Suter, mason, 1800-01.

Originally 2-storey and basement 3-bay centre block linked

by single-storey and basement quadrants surmounted by low

1st floor screen wall with blind windows to slightly advanced single-storey and basement one-bay pedimented wings with

thermal windows at basement and Venetian windows in arched

recesses at ground floor; band course at ground floor, 1st

floor string course, cornice and parapet at centre and

quadrants. Rear wing added Alexander Miller, carpenter,

Inverness, Lewis Yule, John Yule, John McWatt and Colin

Nicolson, masons, Nairn, 1804-05. Centre bay at front

surmounted by attic screen wall with carved pediment

(pediment supplied by Robert Burn, Edinburgh), 1805. Square

plan tower with angle bartizans, Lewis Yule, John Yule and

Colin Nicolson, masons, 1806, at centre of rear.

Idiosyncratic fluted Greek Doric portico at centre bay of

front, Hugh Suter, mason, 1811. East wing, William Symon,

master mason, and Lachlan Mackintosh, carpenter, 1822,

single-storey and basement. East wing gothicised, 1827,

William Symon, master mason, and Alexander Fraser, carpenter

with insertion of hoodmould 3-light cusped and traceried

window and heightening of square-plan castellated bartizans

flanking gable. West wing added, 1827, William Symon, master

mason, and Alexander Fraser, carpenter, single storey and

basement, castellated style with 3-light ground floor window

under Tudor hoodmould to front. Alterations, Alexander

Fraser, master mason, 1830-31, spired belfry added at centre

of west wing (only clock-stage now survives), cast-iron lion

(sculpted by Anderson, Edinburgh, cast by John Wells,

Inverness) erected at apex of east wing (now removed),

interior of house remodelled with new staircase and Gothic

1st floor added to portico (pinnacles at parapet now

removed). Front rendered, 1834. Further alterations and

additions, James Ross 1851.

Statement of Special Interest

Muirtown House was built for Major Hugh Robert Duff, the

editor of the CULLODEN PAPERS. Joseph Mitchell wrote that

"He was an able man but somewhat eccentric. He had been one

of Bonaparte's DETENUS and was confined in a church in France

for six months, which he gave as an excuse for not afterwards

attending divine service at home. He occupied his time in

building his house and laying out the plantations around

it." (Mitchell, REMINISCENCES: (1883), 50-51).

References

Bibliography

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