Doors Open Day

As a frustrated architect, I can't resist an oppurtunity to look round old (and new) buildings. Edinburgh provides an excellent selection, and the main problem on Doors Open Day is one of choice.

I've looked at Crocket's Land many times, as it's one of the more picturesque houses in the West Bow. Inside, it's a fairly unaltered house from 1700 or so, and has recently changed hands. It has a lot of very old wood panelling, done in Baltic pine. The previous owners had apparently stripped the pine bare, but the present incumbents have painted it again. One other visitor, who lived nearby and was clearly curious about what the neighbours were up to, hissed to her friend "They've ruined it!". I heard the same opinion later, when I was in the Signet Library and overheard some other architecture groupies discussing their day. I rather liked the effect. It's an example of a problem that dogs all owners of old buildings. People judge them by the aesthetics of their day, and currently, stripped pine is in. From what I know, such an interior would have been painted from day one. The wood used is decent, but not showy, and leaving it bare would have made you look like you couldn't afford to paint it. We are often disappointed how suburban the tastes of our ancestors were. The paint they used looks fairly genuine too.

The Mansfield Traquair centre gives another example of the past being painted in brighter colours than we'd like to admit. The paint in this case belongs to the murals by Phoebe Traquair. I've heard about these from several sources, so it was good to finally see them. The church is/was catholic, which explains the willingness to place bright images on the walls, something few protestant churches of the era were keen on (though, oddly this stricture seemed not to apply to stained glass). It's a nice reminder though, that pre-Reformation churches could have been just as brightly decorated. I'm not sure I like them as paintings much; a bit too arts and craftsy. They have been very well restored, apart from one badly faded bit which was over a coffee machine for many years.