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Hill House, Helensburgh

Coordinates: 56°01′01.4″N 04°43′41″W / 56.017056°N 4.72806°W / 56.017056; -4.72806
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For the school in Knightsbridge, London, see Hill House School. For the fictional haunted house, see The Haunting of Hill House.

The Hill House
Map
Established1902
LocationHelensburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
ArchitectCharles Rennie Mackintosh, Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh
OwnerWalter Blackie
Websitehttps://www.nts.org.uk/visit/places/the-hill-house

The Hill House in Helensburgh, Scotland, was created by architects and designers Charles and Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh.[1][2] The house is an example of the Modern Style (British Art Nouveau style).[3] It was designed and built for the publisher Walter Blackie in 1902–1904.

Mackintosh also designed the house interior, including furniture and fittings.[4][2] In 1982, the house was donated to the National Trust for Scotland (NTS), which maintains and opens the house to visitors.[5][3]

The client

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Helensburgh, located west of Glasgow, saw settlement by wealthy business people from the industrialised city. In 1902, Walter Blackie, a publisher from Blackie and Son, purchased a plot of land to build his new home. Talwin Morris suggested Charles Rennie Mackintosh as the architect for Hill House, and Blackie, despite Mackintosh's youthfulness, was convinced after seeing other houses designed by him.

Blackie had specific requirements for the construction, seeking grey rough-cast walls and a slate roof instead of traditional materials like bricks and wood beams with red-tiled roofs commonly used in the west of Scotland. He also emphasized architectural effects through the massing of the parts rather than ornamentation, granting Mackintosh creative freedom in his design ideas.[5][6]

Mackintosh carefully observed the everyday life of the Blackie family before creating any drawings, aiming to tailor the house to the needs of its occupants by addressing functional aspects before developing the design.

There have been reports of the house being haunted by the ghost of Walter Blackie,[7] with sightings of a tall, slender figure dressed in black with a long black cape, which vanished after entering the bedroom.[8] Witnesses have also reported smelling cigar smoke in the house without any discernible source.[9]

The exterior

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The Hill House was designed and constructed by Mackintosh and his wife Margaret MacDonald for a fee of £5,000.[10] The exterior of the house is asymmetrical, which shows Mackintosh’s appreciation for A. W. N. Pugin’s picturesque utility, where the exterior contour evolves from the interior planning.

The exterior qualities of the building are nearly the opposite of the warm, exotic, carefully decorated, and smooth interior. Again, Mackintosh relates to Pugin’s theory by minimizing exterior decoration to emphasize the interior design: the transition from the outside world into a more inviting interior space. Paint analysis of the harling on the exterior shows that it might have been left as an unpainted pale grey initially.[11]

Preservation (2019-2028)

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The porous "box" surrounding the house, June 2019

Mackintosh selected Portland cement harling, then a newly introduced product, for the surface finish. This harling was found to be less durable than traditional lime harling, and by 2017, it was discovered to be in a precarious condition, putting the integrity of the whole building at risk. As a temporary solution, in 2019 NTS has enclosed the Hill House in a transparent porous "box," allowing some movement of air, so that the structure dries out gradually.[12][13] The steel box is set to remain in place until 2028.[14]

As with several of Mackintosh's buildings there were problems of water ingress from the outset. In 1953, the then owner Campbell Lawson, commissioned Glasgow architect Margaret Brodie to redesign details to resolve this issue.[15]

The interior

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One room of the interior of the house.

The mansion combined the Edwardian period’s traditional conception of the "femininity" of an intimate interior space with the "masculinity" of the exterior public world. To Mackintosh, bringing the "masculine" aspects to the inside would break away from the ornately decorated and "feminine" conventional interiors. This allowed him to convey different feelings and experiences depending on the purpose of each space. Mackintosh used different materials, colours, and lighting to perform a full experiential transition from one point to another.

References

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  1. ^ "Rennie Mackintosh's Hill House – when two roofs are better than one". the Guardian. 2 June 2019. Retrieved 24 October 2022.
  2. ^ a b "The Hill House, Helensburgh". www.historicenvironment.scot. Retrieved 24 October 2022.
  3. ^ a b "Hillhouse by Charles Rennie Mackintosh". victorianweb.org. Retrieved 24 October 2022.
  4. ^ "The Hill House". National Trust for Scotland. Retrieved 24 October 2022.
  5. ^ a b Scotland, National Trust for (29 June 2021). "The Hill House". National Trust for Scotland. Retrieved 29 June 2021.
  6. ^ NTS Places to visit - The Hill House Archived 2012-04-02 at the Wayback Machine
  7. ^ "BBC Scotland - BBC Scotland - There's an actual Hill House in the UK — and yes, it's haunted". BBC. Retrieved 24 January 2023.
  8. ^ "National Trust for Scotland - Autumn". Archived from the original on 2 April 2012. Retrieved 4 October 2011.
  9. ^ "BBC Scotland - BBC Scotland - There's an actual Hill House in the UK — and yes, it's haunted". BBC. Retrieved 12 April 2023.
  10. ^ The Newsroom (22 November 2018). "Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Hill House gets giant chainmail '˜box'". www.scotsman.com. Retrieved 24 January 2023. {{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
  11. ^ Patrick Baty. The Hill House. A report following an examination of a number of external surfaces.11 May 2005.
  12. ^ "How We'll Save Hill House". The National Trust for Scotland. 30 November 2017. Retrieved 2 February 2018.
  13. ^ Slessor, Catherine (2 June 2019). "Rennie Mackintosh's Hill House – when two roofs are better than one". The Observer. Retrieved 2 June 2019.
  14. ^ "Protective box around Rennie Mackintosh house to remain in place until 2028". The Independent. 19 December 2024. Retrieved 20 December 2024.
  15. ^ https://www.nts.org.uk/visit/places/the-hill-house/women-of-the-hill-house
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See also

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56°01′01.4″N 04°43′41″W / 56.017056°N 4.72806°W / 56.017056; -4.72806

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