Birth-stool of Scottish Romanticism? Holyrood and Sir William Bruce, 'Surveyor-General and Overseer of the King's Buildings in Scotland'.

This paper considers 1670s Holyrood and Sir William Bruce, and it aims to set out some fresh contexts within which both architect and project can be placed.¹ It sees Holyrood's reconstruction as fulfilling practical and rhetorical requirements for a modern royal palace, plus a political need to project a distinctively Scottish monarchy, meaning the architecture had therefore to encompass a careful selection of distinctively Scottish references. It also highlights Bruce's early role in castle preservation and conservation, in castle revival and revived Gothic, as well as his interest in what was to become known as the Picturesque. Overlying all this is the argument that Holyrood is the archetypal building in the history of Scotland's proto-Romanticism and myth-making, and that it was made intentionally so partly to promote a myth of royal presence where the truth was otherwise; and that partly underlying the creation of a mythic Scotland was the decision to launch at Holyrood a reinvigorated Stuart rhetoric which included exploiting a politically unifying and unthreatening cult of Mary Queen of Scots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]