Located in Glasgow’s Southside in a park overlooking a ravine is a Victorian home constructed in 1857-8. The Holmwood House was designed and built for the James Couper, who owned a local paper mill with his brother that was located just below the home along the White Cart Water. While rambling along Lynn Park around and below the home, I noticed a spot by the water where there was a remnant of tile flooring. It was surrounded by nothing but mud and garbage, that led me to wonder if that was the mill. The home now is surrounded by lush greenery and trees, but at the time of construction it would have had a perfect view down to this spot of tiled flooring next to the water. (The home would have also had a view of Cathcart Castle, but this was pulled down in 1980 after being abandoned in the 18th C, so I didn’t get to note this view.) This mill was hired by the government to provide paper during the Crimean War (1853-1856) which supplied James Couper with his wealth and turned him into one of the Victorian nouveau riche of Glasgow. Being a member of the nouveau riche, he used the design and image of his home to showcase his wealth to those who visited.

The Holmwood House was designed by Alexander “Greek” Thomson. The nickname “Greek” came around in his late 30s when he adopted exploring a classical Greek style of architecture at a time when Gothic Revival was the dominant architectural style. This is especially noted in the “palmette” Greek leaf motifs throughout the building. Being of his era, though, he used new innovative construction techniques and materials in his stylistic exploration. Such elements as plate glass and wrought iron.

“Many architects have used Classical architecture and its principles and produced beautiful buildings, but Thomson didn’t recreate them, he understood the language, he understood the complex geometries, he understood the mystical qualities of it and he then interpreted that in a very individual, unique way.”

Sally White, from the Alexander Thomson Society

The Holmwood House also was innovative in its application of asymmetry to the exterior of the home. Greek designs tended to be symmetrical, but Thomson broke that convention with his understanding of the architectural language. Every angle of the building presents a different form.

A little detail I enjoyed were the points coming off of the roof peaks. It was surprising to see them surviving to this day, although they easily could have been a part of restoration.

Antiquated now, Thomson’s examination of the aesthetics of the past with the technology of the present seems to be something that we are currently struggling with in contemporary architecture. In watching a recent video on YouTube about beauty in architecture, there’s a noted psychological reaction noted in architecture students that as they progress through school. Their tastes begin to change towards appreciating buildings that non-architecture students categorize as not being beautiful. This is probably connected to this idea that once one understands the skill or concept of the non-beautiful contemporary architecture that they are able to see something in it that others cannot. Which, I would argue, gets into a whole issue of elevating the ego of singular architects over the needs and wants of the people that they have been enlisted to work for. But, I’ll digress back to Holmwood House.

Continuing around the exterior of the house, there is a walled kitchen garden (which is known in Scotland as a kailyaird) located between the main house and the coach house. (The coach house was not available for tour and appeared to have been converted into a holiday home to rent for short stays.) While not much was blooming yet in spring, the garden was not large enough to be self-sustaining for the house, so it served to function as a means of supplementing the goods of the kitchen. The home was not self-contained in its food production, but could lessen the need for goods from the market with some fresh vegetables. This kitchen garden with its wall would have been hidden from visiting guests who could not see over the wall and the rooms for entertaining lack views to look at the garden. This would have been a means of separating the classes of the house from not having to see one another and for the gardener to work while not being in view. Which goes to show what the Realism movement in art was beginning to do at this time over in France by bringing the labors of work into view of the class who had designed ways to hide them from view.

Taking a peek closer at the building, I liked to see that the drains and roof brackets matched one another. They have an almost celadon ceramic look to them in their glazing. The cupping of the edge of the roof by the bracket I found peculiar as I imagine that detail could be a point for water to collect and lead to rust, but the brackets seemed to be doing well. (Again, I am unsure of what has been replaced in the restoration and what would be original.)

The patchwork quality of the stonework I find to be beautiful. The differences in the stone create a dynamic texture. There’s still Greek motifs carved into the façade, but the field of the walls is dominated by details of natural irregularity.

The stone is Giffnock freestone, a type of Scottish sandstone. It is smoothed in portions, but the majority is given a pockmarked texture. Sandstone seems to be a difficult stone for carved detail to keep its detail when it is exposed to the elements, notably rain. So the Greek motifs seem to be carved into areas where they would be protected by overhangs that create pressures that push rain away.

Moving to the interior, let’s start with a blueprint. They laid it out on the table of the dining room and I love this as a detail when touring. It’s a chance to see layout from an architect’s brain. The labyrinth from above.

As we can see from the plans, there isn’t really a grand entrance, per se. Instead, we enter into a small vestibule and are led immediately into a narrow hall.

Once inside, the level of detail explodes.

Intricately assembled tile floors and hand-painted stenciled walls. At the time of this construction, the paint colors red and blue would have been much more expensive than other colors, so this entrance room envelops the guest in the opulent wealth.

This particular motif carries through the transitional areas of the home, as we see here from the entrance hall towards the adjoining hall and staircase. In the entry hall we find a carved Italian marble chimneypiece that contains a barometer at the center surrounded by the zodiac. It was carved by Alexander “Greek” Thomson’s friend and associate, the local Glasgow sculptor George Mossman.

The gaslights in this home were also of an interesting innovation in which they could be illuminated from a switch on the wall instead of having to light each of them individually. A simple detail that most of us experience without thinking twice with our electric lighting. (The gaslights of Holmwood House have all been converted to electric at this time, though, so the gas lighting switch is only a story at this point.)

Not getting distracted by the beautiful staircase, let’s examine the dining room.

There’s a lot going on here that is all so interesting. Let’s start at the top : there are gold Palmettes decorating around the ceiling/wall connection that protrude off the wall. (I’m pretty sure this is when the tour guide realized I was going to be asking all kinds of odd questions.) They are carved wood, coated in plaster, and then painted in gold. From this above photo, we see an illuminated sideboard (or one might call it the buffet table) that is lit from above. This is an innovative approach to use sunlight to illuminate. There is a skylight above to flood the darkened rear of the room with light and glisten the food to be presented in the dining room. The concept of individual courses being delivered throughout a meal is a relatively new concept referred to as service à la russe (or service in the Russian style). Before, meals were served at a singular point where all dishes were brought out at once. It was first introduced to the Western world by the Russian ambassador in France in 1810. (Thus, the name of Russian in French.) This new service à la russe only caught on as being the dominant form in England in the 1880s and 90s (and we could probably argue Scotland as well) so, this room would have been designed for the meals to be presented as a singular object. Thus, the gleaming meal in the darkened end of the room would have been quite the oppulent sight.

The level of detail here is amazing.

The Holmwood Home is said to have been an inspiration to Modernist architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and I would argue that details like this are exactly what feel like were carried through to his designs exploring harvesting natural lighting.

Just a beautiful moment in architecture. The mirrors here also reflect the light out into the room, but would also increase the oppulent image of how much food there would have appeared to be.

The walls.

Again, the wall details are hand-stenciled and painted onto the wall. Except the columns intersecting the frieze. Those are stencils applied to the wall. Now, I’m a little uncertain if they are original or not, as this room was used as a chapel when the Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions occupied the home. They used wallpaper in this room covering up the stenciling, but if that was covering the whole wall, or was only these columns, is what I am unsure about. The guide pointed out that they have attempted to remove the paper columns (one corner was seen to be lifted in the room), but their removal would cause more damage to the frieze, so they currently remain.

The bright block on the frieze is because there is a light directed to provide a better illumination of the painted detail.

Whereas the exterior of the building celebrates asymmetry, the interior is all about symmetry. This door on the left is decorative to reflect the other functional door. The black fireplace makes a great contrast to the white sideboard. Both with carved gold details.

Focusing on the doors, they are beautifully carved wood. The details reflecting the 3-dimensional details of along the edge of the ceiling and on the ceiling. Also, if you notice, the frame of the door frame tapers. It has a wider base that tapers in as it goes up to the head, much like a Greek column. This element of the tapering of columns is not always noticed when looking at columns as we expect things to visually recess in size as they reach away, but here it is called to attention.

The other two doors in this room don’t have the same tapering door frame, but they are restricted by being between the sideboard and a wall. These doorways all have a flair to the top that flips up and out to the room, but is more pronounced here as it sits squeezed in its constraints. Again, the left one in the room is purely decorative for the balance of symmetry, while this right one leads to the butler’s pantry and kitchen and would have been used for the delivery of food.

And we’re walking.

Reflected over the staircase from the dining room is the parlour. The original furniture of the home has been lost to time so the Scottish National Trust, who owns the home currently, uses historical pieces from their collection to decorate the rooms. These pieces were not what the Couper family would have had, but are of the same era. A solitary sofa feels lonely in an eclectic Victorian home.

The Victorian attention to detail is a lovely thing. The stenciled walls of Greek motifs, the 3-dimensional elements projecting off the walls and ceiling, the bands of color wrapping around playing with the wood. The sky blue ceiling is an interesting detail relating to the Greek and the natural world, but my experience with such things is that unless the ceiling is brightly lit or multiple stories above, it quickly becomes a dark space. The light-pink plaster with gold flourishes seems to work in offsetting the whole of the blue from being too dominant.

Breaking out of the square, the parlour contains this round room element, pushing the home out into the grounds. As the trees have grown up around the house, the round room of glass bathes the people seated at the table in greenery. Sitting at the edge of architecture. I could imagine on a stormy Scotland day watching the trees sway in the wind and rain drops cascading down the glass of the windows that this would leave one feeling like the line between shelter and nature is thin.

When I was working construction in the middle of winter in the rainy Pacific Northwest, there were many moments where I would stop to watch the rain through an unfinished window opening. Rain sneaking into the building to darken the particleboard subflooring before the gypcrete was poured. That tenuous barrier of shelter was punctured. Sometimes, when it is storming out, I like to open my window to hear the storm and feel that chill wet in the air to relive that moment where that veil of shelter fell.

Back to Holmwood.

While the ratio of these parlour windows is not equal, they are not fixed, but operable. As noted by these sash chains and locking mechanisms. If the residents chose they could raise the tall panes creating an opening at the bottom the same size as the top. A transition of window ratio of head and body to head, body, and feet.

Texture and color. Peach and gold daffodils dropping from the ceiling.

The ground floor bedrooms are not restored, or hopefully not yet restored. So, let’s finally head to the stairs.

Secluded from all windows, this central staircase glows. On the wall, we can see the painted transition from the ground floor reds and pinks into a lighter, soft yellow for the floor above. In the process of restoring the Holmwood House, they strip the layers of change back down to the original. A strip of the 1858 original, aged and darkened, acts as the point of reference. Each of the restored rooms has one of the reference strips of the original. A wrinkle of age left for posterity.

I love to see these spaces filled with color. It feels like the Victorians are frequently depicted as lacking in color, but the reality of it was that there was an explosion of color at the time. It is just that colors fade with the passage of time. Fabric and paints mature to ghosts of what they once were. Similar to how the album cover for Never Mind the Bollocks by the Sex Pistols was chosen to be dayglow pinks and yellows because when exposed to UV light they would fade and bleach. Thus they were making a commentary about the entropy of design and “flashiness” in relation to color and music. Plus, the methods in which we make colors has changed as we gain a better understanding of the toxic nature of certain chemicals and compounds. One of the more famous being arsenic green.

Reaching the top of the stairs, we can look through the carved balustrade. The palmette leaf motif continues with some flourishes that feel more like a merging of eras, with the more vine-like organic forms showing their presence. While touring the home, I was curious as to if the handrail was original or a part of the restoration. I have noticed historic balustrades utilizing modern additions for handrails to preserve the original wood through the limiting of human contact. A “look, but touch this other thing” approach to preservation. Without this handrail the distance down to the balustrade looks a tad long. So, perhaps it just looks good for its age with previous occupants not needing to use it frequently or it has been modified at some point.

On a sunny day the wall can become speckled in lights of polkadots. As one can see in the above picture.

The reason for this is that in the darkened center of the home there is a cupola to let in natural daylight. Etched into the glass around the sides are little stars that catch the light and transition it down onto the wall below.

Stepping through the lobby, we enter the one restored bedroom of the house. This was a woman’s bedroom. The decoration of this room is much more subdued with its lack of sculptural decoration and just simple polka dots painted onto the wall instead of our Greek palmettes finding their way in. (Although they have found their way into the room via the carpeting.) The moulding around the ceiling, while not sculpted in a repeating pattern like other places in the home, is covered in gold. This is said to mimic the idea of Victorian women being pious, and here would be her golden halo.

With a golden bed to match. Again we have symmetry with the doors, but being a corner room of the house, the asymmetry of the exterior has found opposition with the symmetry of the interior via this western window. Perhaps the original layout called for a piece of furniture or artwork to complete the balance at the time. One thing that I have found interesting in Scotland is that the doors open to the room instead of towards the wall. I’m not sure why this is. It would result in fewer door handles causing doors swinging open to damage the walls. Although, the doors would create a little hallway when walking into a new room instead of entering into a wide open room. I’m not sure if this is just a Scottish thing, as I have incountered it in other Scottish buildings, or if there is another reason for this.

Me reflecting on the doors I’ve encountered in my life and which way they swing.

The Scottish National Trust chose to display this painting, On The Terrace (1904), by Neo-Classicist Victorian painter John William Godward in this bedroom. Referred to as a “High Victorian Dreamer” who painted “Victorians in togas” (which is more strongly used with Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, of whom Godward was his protégé) it feels fitting to include the painting in this Greek Revival home even if the timelines don’t exactly lineup.

Moving on, we have the Drawing Room. Located upstairs, it gets more natural lighting and has a wall of windows that wrap the corner to let in that natural light. Large mirrors are placed on the two side walls and far wall to bounce the light around the room. Balancing that brightness, the décor of the room is darker with stained wood, blue, and gold on black (and just a hint of a red line).

The drawing room, being a more active room, has raised the wooden wall protecting up from its floor level, much like in the dining room. The wooden floor paneling also mimics a game board with different shades of alternating triangle wedges.

With the gas lamps seen on either side of the fireplace they are attached to pilasters of wood. A simple motif, it hides the pipework for the gas (and now the electrical lines) without having to deal with drilling into the wall. Being an exterior wall, I would imagine not having to deal with carving away at it for utilities would be ideal. So, these pilasters separate the room into panels of blue.

A balance in symmetry. I like how the corners are set up to have a framed gold on black palmette border. The use of the panel border being a half-palmette is an interesting choice where the top center is the only point of a full palmette motif.

A series of layers upon layers to reach the field of ceiling.

Which is a dark blue sky of 3-dimensional stars.

And thus ended the tour. The kitchen and servant spaces had been modified to be the office spaces for the Trust to run the home as well as a little café. Because everything is improved by a little café.

And a tree-lined passage.

Bonus : Some photos of a curved terrace housing development by Alexander “Greek” Thomson also in Glasgow’s Southend.

The Millbrae Crescent was constructed a year after Thomson’s death and is said to be based off of his drawings, or it could have been his architectural partner Robert Turnbull.

The columns are a blend of Egyptian and Greek in their motifs.

The front façade of the terraces don’t change much, but some people have painted their entrances and others have left the stone to weather.

The ends, however, differ significantly. Bookends of a crescent. The rear of the homes face the White Cart Water, which is the same as the Holmwood House. None of the homes were available to tour, so I just snapped a few photos of the exterior from the street while on a walk exploring the neighborhood.

A la prochaine.