Bonaly Tower


(Bonally Tower)

A substantial Scots Baronial mansion on the northern slopes of White Hill in SW Edinburgh, Bonaly (once Bonally) Tower was built as a country residence for the advocate and conservationist Lord Henry Cockburn (1779 - 1854) by extending an 18th C. farmhouse he had leased here in 1811. He bought the farmhouse in 1829 and commissioned the architect William Henry Playfair (1790 - 1857) to add a peel tower in 1836-39, creating an L-plan house. Subsequent owners further extended the house; the west wing and baronial touches came in 1870 by David Bryce (1803-76) and the remarkable library was added in 1888 by Sydney Mitchell (1856 - 1930). The resulting building features crowstepped gables, corbelled-out corner towers, a crenelated parapet and an unusual pencil-shaped six-level stair tower, with a dormered conical roof.

The property was used by the army during the Second World War. Thereafter, it was sympathetically divided into five sizeable flats in 1946, retaining many original features such the wood-panelling, timber doors, fireplaces, stained glass and the Gothic-styled library, with its immense inglenook fireplace, fitted bookcases and corner turret rooms. The house is now A-listed.

Cockburn cleared a small hamlet which once lay within the 4 ha / 10 acres of grounds, which were subsequently landscaped to form gardens that incorporate a section of the Bonaly Burn. They also include statues, urns and pieces of decorative stonework collected by him from around Edinburgh, many of which are now also A-listed. These include statues of Robert the Bruce, Sir James Douglas and William Shakespeare; the latter is thought to have come from the former Theatre Royal that stood on the site now occupied by the Waverley Gate office development on Waterloo Place in the city centre.

Cockburn brought many notable legal and literary friends to his house, hosting meetings of the Friday Club, which involved a group of Edinburgh literati.


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