Accessibility

Font Size

100% 150% 200%

Background Colour

Default Contrast
Close Reset

Edinburgh, Royal Botanic Garden, Glasshouses

Glasshouse(S) (20th Century)

Site Name Edinburgh, Royal Botanic Garden, Glasshouses

Classification Glasshouse(S) (20th Century)

Alternative Name(s) Greenhouses; Plant Houses; Hothouses; Arboretum Road; Inverleith Row

Canmore ID 128309

Site Number NT27NW 36.02

NGR NT 24696 75491

Datum OSGB36 - NGR

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/128309

Ordnance Survey licence number AC0000807262. All rights reserved.
Canmore Disclaimer. © Copyright and database right 2024.

Toggle Aerial | View on large map

Digital Images

Administrative Areas

  • Council Edinburgh, City Of
  • Parish Edinburgh (Edinburgh, City Of)
  • Former Region Lothian
  • Former District City Of Edinburgh
  • Former County Midlothian

Summary Record (2 March 2012)

Plant houses erected c.1965-67. Built to replace the earlier glasshouses by Mackenzie and Moncur.

RCAHMS (CAJS) 2012.

Architecture Notes

Plant houses demolished c.1964, new Plant Houses erected c.1965-67.

For list of related sites, see NT27NW 36.00 Edinburgh, Royal Botanic Garden, General.

REFERENCE:

PSA R/14/1-14 are photographs showing hothouses due for demolition (1962)

PSA R/19/1-14 are photographs showing hothuses due for demolition (1964)

PSA R/95/1-9 are photographs of plans for the new plant houses (1964)

REFERENCE:

Colin McWilliam Collection

Acc. No. 1991/53

MS 751/2

Text for Scotsman article entitled 'New-type glasshouse for Royal Botanic Gardens.'

Scotsman article entitled 'Arcaded box floats over Botanic Garden.' (4.7.1966)

Activities

Publication Account (1997)

Two glasshouses - a large exhibition plant house (420 ft. in length) and a smaller exhibition orchid house set at right angles - of a startingly innovative suspended portal-frame system of construction, allowing, in a somewhat megastructural fashion, a sharp segregation between fixed frame and free-flowing contents. Built on the initiative of the then RBG Curator, Dr E E Kemp, who in 1961 noticed corrosion in the old exhibition house and argued successfully for he building of new, Modern structures. A full scale section of the new buildings were erected and tested to destruction in 1964. All structural support derives from an intricate external structure of high-tensile steel tubes and cables, from which the glazing is suspended. As a result of the absence of internal framework - stipulated by Dr Kemp - serried potted-plants are done away with, and the entire space can be given over to exoic landscape 'environments': African and American desertscapes, East Indian tropics, and Australiasian temperate areas are only a few steps apart. (Fig. 4.24).

Information from 'Rebuilding Scotland: The Postwar Vision, 1945-75', (1997).

Photographic Survey (6 March 2007)

Photographed by the Threatened Buildings Survey as part of the wider survey of the gardens prior to the demolition of the West entrance and building of the John Hope Gateway.

RCAHMS (CAJS) 2012.

References

MyCanmore Image Contributions


Contribute an Image

MyCanmore Text Contributions