Robert Reid and the Early Involvement of the State in the Care of Scottish Ecclesiastical Buildings and Sites

Abstract

As a result of the Act of Annexation of 1587, and the removal of bishops from the Scottish church in 1689, the Crown in Scotland incidentally acquired ownership of a large number of monastic and cathedral churches. By the late eighteenth century, as interest in medieval architecture grew, occasional grants were made towards their maintenance; but between 1827 and 1839, when a Scottish Office of Works was established under the architect Robert Reid, major efforts began to be made to stabilise considerable numbers of those buildings. The approaches to this work are of interest for what they tell us about emerging attitudes to architectural conservation.