The interior of Hospitalfield is almost entirely the creation of the mid C19, being reworked between 1850 and 1890 by Patrick Allan-Fraser, a talented artist, who had married the last of the Fraser dynasty in 1843. Having inherited, through his wife, a run down estate and inconvenient house, he set about rehabilitating Hospitalfield, already considered a cultural monument in this period, by ingenuity and hard work. Establishing a building team to renovate the farms and develop the income of the estate, he moved on to rework the House in 1849, beginning with the ancient barn that had provided the name for Scott’s fictional building, Monkbarns.
The
Picture Gallery reflects Scott’s concern to acknowledge the legacy
of the past; family marriage crests and heraldry are carved into the wall-heads
and hammer beams which support the massive pine wood roof lining, and
the spirit of the design is of the C17, from when the family took possession
of the site. The upper walls were lined with embossed leather panels,
while below, a double dado level of oak panelling supported a collection
of self portraits by eminent Victorian painters. This collection is still
intact and hangs in its original position; together with the furnishings
and carvings, allowing the room to be regarded as one of the most important
interiors in Scotland.
The Dining Room,1854, on the first floor of the South wing overlooks the walled garden, which was quite possibly the site of the physic garden of the medieval hospital. This room, again combining gilt leather panels with oak dado panelling, is well documented, the original accounts for work still existing in the archive collection, and has been returned to its original condition. The interior has been designed to fit into the C17 structure, and is fitted with high quality materials, imported custom-made gilt leather panels from Holland, and a C17 cabinet, also from Holland.
The fine mohogany dining table and chairs have been
suggested as being late productions of the Edinburgh firm of Trotter,
cabinet makers to Robert Adam. Interestingly, although this has the
strong manly feel of a Dining Room, it is quite possible that this interior
was originally designed as a Drawing Room.
The Drawing Room, c.1870, was created by joining and extending two earlier rooms in order to fit two Flemish tapestries of c.1620-40, creating an outdoor effect within the room, while recreating The Green Room in Scott’s novel, which is inhabited by ancestral spirits. The tapestry subjects are of figures in an arboreal landscape, and mirror the views from the windows to the tree-lined avenues.
To complete this room, a catalogue
of the natural flora of the estate was carved and applied into the coffered
cedarwood ceiling between 1884-8. This project highlights the development
of a culture of wood-carving being kept alive at Hospitalfield, following
the national collapse of the wood-carving trade in Scotland around 1850,
from which time apprentices were being trained to maintain skills; David
Maver, the woodcarver of this room, was trained by James Peters, who in
turn had been trained by John Hutchinson, who completed his training at
Hospitalfield in 1854. The Drawing Room contains a very fine harpsichord,
made in London in 1776, by the celebrated Kirkman brothers.
During the last years of the C19 other parts of the House were converted to hold the art school endowed by Patrick and Elisabeth Allan-Fraser, increasing the residential accommodation, and building a new block of Studios to the north-east, adjoining Patrick's own studio built in the 1840s. Little change was made to the layout of the site after this period. In 2003, the Cedar Room extension to the Picture Gallery, which was left incomplete on its ground floor following the death of Patrick , was finally brought to a conclusion with the development of a new performance and events space, and the Director’s House, prescribed in the original bequest of 1890, has also been completed in 2004.
It is a legacy of the C19 organic design that the House is almost infinitely extendable, and eminently flexible, as times change and function needs to be continally reassessed.
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