Cambusnethan House, or Cambusnethan Priory, in

North Lanarkshire North Lanarkshire ( sco, North Lanrikshire; gd, Siorrachd Lannraig a Tuath) is one of 32 council areas of Scotland. It borders the northeast of the City of Glasgow and contains many of Glasgow's suburbs and commuter towns and villages. It als ...

, Scotland, was designed by

James Gillespie Graham James Gillespie Graham (11 June 1776 – 11 March 1855) was a Scottish architect, prominent in the early 19th century. Life Graham was born in Dunblane on 11 June 1776. He was the son of Malcolm Gillespie, a solicitor. He was christened as J ...

and completed in 1820. It is listed on the Buildings at Risk Register for Scotland as a building facing "critical" risk, having been damaged by fire in the 1980s and since vandalized. It is generally regarded as being the best remaining example of a Graham-built country house in the quasi-ecclesiastical style of the Gothic revival. It was rented for a short number of years in the early 1960s as an architects office for the team who built the 60s part of Livingston, Scotland. Later it was used as a hotel and restaurant and "mediaeval banqueting hall", the last use being tenuously linked with William Finnemund, the 12th century,

Laird Laird () is the owner of a large, long-established Scottish estate. In the traditional Scottish order of precedence, a laird ranked below a baron and above a gentleman. This rank was held only by those lairds holding official recognition in ...

Cambusnethan Cambusnethan is a large village and suburb on the eastern edge of Wishaw, North Lanarkshire in Scotland. It is approximately long, straddling both sides of the A722 on a hill overlooking Wishaw. Etymology The name "''Cambusnethan"'' was his ...

. There was originally a Norman tower house near the site of the present building, and this was replaced by a

manor house A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The house formed the administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were held the lord's manorial courts, communal meals w ...

during the 17th century. The manor house burned down in March 1816, and the present house was commissioned and built in 1820. Cambusnethan

The Priory was built for the

Lockharts of Lee The Lockharts of Lee are a Lanarkshire family that trace their descent from Sir Simon Locard. The family estate is the barony of Lee, centred on Lee Castle near Lanark, originally built around 1272 but much expanded in the 19th century. Origin ...

from Castlehill, Auchenglen, in South Lanarkshire. The family's

coat of arms A coat of arms is a heraldic visual design on an escutcheon (i.e., shield), surcoat, or tabard (the latter two being outer garments). The coat of arms on an escutcheon forms the central element of the full heraldic achievement, which in its ...

is carved above the main entrance and etched in every balustrade of the main staircase inside. The arms represents a casket, heart and lock and derives from the tradition that the ancestors of this family carried

Robert the Bruce Robert I (11 July 1274 – 7 June 1329), popularly known as Robert the Bruce (Scottish Gaelic: ''Raibeart an Bruis''), was King of Scots from 1306 to his death in 1329. One of the most renowned warriors of his generation, Robert eventual ...

's heart back from the holy land. The nearby Cambusnethan Manse (now Elaina Nursing Home, Netherton) was also the birthplace of

John Gibson Lockhart John Gibson Lockhart (12 June 1794 – 25 November 1854) was a Scottish writer and editor. He is best known as the author of the seminal, and much-admired, seven-volume biography of his father-in-law Sir Walter Scott: ''Memoirs of the Life of Sir ...

, Sir

Walter Scott Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet, playwright and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European and Scottish literature, notably the novels '' Ivanhoe'', '' Rob Roy ...

's biographer and later son in law. There are few remaining examples of early 19th-century

Neo-Gothic Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

mansions remaining in Scotland as many were demolished in the late 1950s and 1960s. Cambusnethan House is a notable building in its own right as a good example of the neo-Gothic style, and also because so few buildings of this type still remain. Cambusnethan1

The house is two and three storeys high with

turret Turret may refer to: * Turret (architecture), a small tower that projects above the wall of a building * Gun turret, a mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon * Objective turret, an indexable holder of multiple lenses in an optical microscope * Mi ...

s at each corner, a three-storey bow in the west elevation and a massive square porch. Characteristically, the house was very ornately decorated with a variety of architectural details; castellated roof lines, scrolled pinnacles, narrow pointed windows and drip moulds, and various cornices, besides carved motifs and decorated chimneys. Some of the ornate pinnacles have been removed in the interest of safety, and there had been at a recent extension to the lower ground floor across a sunken passage across the house with a roof flush with ground level. Cambusneathan Stairwell

At risk

Use of the building ended in 1984, and the building has fallen prey to vandalism and fire. The building is listed as At Risk by the

Scottish Civic Trust Scottish usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including: *Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family native to Scotland *Scottish English *Scottish national identity, the Scottish ide ...

but is already in derelict condition.

Rescue bid

In March 2014 the "Friends of Cambusnethan Priory" was established, with the aim of saving the building from further deterioration. Cambusneathan House Side View

References

External links

* {{coord, 55, 45, 21, N, 03, 56, 44, W, type:landmark_region:GB, display=title Houses completed in 1820 Category A listed buildings in North Lanarkshire James Gillespie Graham buildings Country houses in North Lanarkshire