File:The baronial and ecclesiastical antiquities of Scotland (1909) (14784094975).jpg

Identifier: baronialecclesia00bill (find matches)
Title: The baronial and ecclesiastical antiquities of Scotland
Year: 1909 (1900s)
Authors: Billings, R. W. (Robert William), 1813-1874 Wiston-Glyn, A. W
Subjects: Architecture Church architecture
Publisher: Edinburg T.N. Foulis
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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the ancientEgyptians fresh and clean after three thousand years have passed overthem. The brick and timber towns of England undergo a perpetual repro-duction, which sweeps away the vestiges of early domestic architecture, andadjusts everything to the tastes and habits of the time being. The very oldeststreets of London have an air of yesterday about them âa brick-and-plasternewness that tells of recent origin, and points to quick decay. In theNorthern towns, on the other hand, many of the streets and lanes are oldfortificationsâliving memorials of the day when the Scotsmans house wasliterally his castle. Modernization may be more useful for domestic ease andfor sanitary purposes, but our old stone streets have the decided superiority inpicturesqueness and interest. The gloomy masses of the old town of Edinburgh are well known ; butthey derive their interest almost entirely from their size and remarkableposition : very few of them have architectural merits. It would seem as if the
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Ill I IIOOL HILL, ABERDEEN. ANTIQUITIES OF SCOTLAND It extraordinary height of the houses, caused by the necessity of keeping withinthe walls, interfered with any attempts at ornament. In the architecture of thetime the decoration was nearly all on the top of the building; and as thehighest flat or house, in the upright street called a common stair, was gener-ally occupied by the poorest family of the group, it was not likely that muchneedless expense would be laid out on it. In the other towns, however,where the neighbouring gentry had separate edifices for their town-houses orhotels, they were often as richly decorated with masonry as their countrymansions. Of such buildings we have specimens in Stirling, Dundee,Greenock, Maybole, Elgin, and especially in Aberdeen. In other places thetown-house or tolbooth may be the only specimen, on a considerable scale, ofthis interesting national system of architecture ; and the numerous decayedvillagesâespecially those which skirt Fifeshireâ

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