ScotClans at Newhailes – Saving a Piece of Scottish History Through Photography

Wednesday the 15th of August was a busy day for the ScotClans family, it was the first of a series of photo-shoots we are doing at Newhailes, a 17th – 18th Century Historic House managed by The National Trust for Scotland.

Four models, hairdresser, clothes dressers, dress designer, photographer, lighting supervisor and general helpers/tea makers all worked together to come up with a series of great images that show off our latest wedding range and launches the partnership between ScotClans and Newhailes.

This is the story of how we came by such a fantastic location, and our reasons for using this historic building.

Our family have been visitors and admirers of Newhailes for many years, finding it was like discovering a secret place, not unlike the Secret Garden. An old walkway takes you past a shell grotto (which both of our children truly believe to be the witches' house), along a meandering stream dotted with waterfalls, through an old wood and the remains of a tea house. Situated in the centre of these beautiful gardens is the mansion house. It is a grand, elegant building built in 1686 which was the seat of the Dalrymple family for nearly three and a half centuries until it was given to the National Trust for Scotland in 1997.

For many years we have just been admirers of its façade, until we had the chance to be shown around the house by the House & Collections Officer Marie Buckley. We thought the gardens were a great discovery, but the house appears untouched with a 'lived in' feel which we rarely see these days in our sanitised tourist industry. Marie Buckle is an amazing lady who has shared this house for many years with the endless paintings and artifacts of generations of the Dalrymple family. Seeing this house through her eyes gave us not just a deeper understanding of the house’s history but a real respect for the work done by Marie and all the people that are working to conserve parts of our Scottish history.

Photo by ScotClans, location Newhailes As Marie shows us around, our jaws open in amazement at every room we enter, we see the work done to conserve this important house. Marie herself shows us a silver salver in the centre of an Dining Room table (can just make it out in the image on the left). She tells us she discovered it in the basement, caked in layers of dirt. Intrigued by this piece Marie travels to London to research what it could be and how to clean it. Marie discovers that she has unearthed an extremely rare piece attributed to Eliza Godfrey, one of the few woman silver smiths in London in the 18th century. With no visible hallmark this piece was somewhat of a mystery. Marie painstakingly conserved the salver over the houses closed season, the specialist cleaning takes her 5-6months. We are sure that the beauty of the house is definitely attributed to this amazing conservation work done by such passionate people.

The story of the salver is not alone but one of many examples of conservation over replacement.

Down a spiral staircase we are introduced to yet another example: Marie tells us about Newhailes’ conservation approach to cracking paint. Most places would shave off the old paint and replace it with a copy of the same colour. At Newhailes they have created a truly unique technique of saving the original paint. A time intensive and fiddlely technique which uses Japanese paper, gelatin, rabbit skin glue and heat from a tiny specialist iron which relaxes the paint back, making the cracks disappear and stops the flaking.

Photo by ScotClans, location Newhailes One room boasts a huge library and probably the most impressive fireplace I have ever seen, a polar bear skin lies on the floor, a mere sheepskin rug was just not impressive enough. Embroidered elegant seats all embroidered by generations of the family that lived there.

Speaking to Marie we started talking about the possibility of using Newhailes for a photo shoot and surprisingly Marie was not only positive and helpful but actually began coming up with ideas as to how we could use Newhailes. Over the next few weeks we communicated regularly with Marie and went from initially just thinking of doing one photo shoot to arranging a series of 10 photo shoots over the next 18 months.

Photo by ScotClans, location Newhailes At ScotClans we have always looked at improving our photography and what a great base for not just our outfit photography, but all our photography, and so in a way Newhailes has become a location for our company. We are a Scottish historical information site that supports Scottish manufactures by focusing on just selling Scottish made products. By using Newhailes for all our photography not only do we have a great location for our images but the money we pay to use this location is used to conserve the house and collection. A perfect relationship on many different levels.

We dedicate this news story to Marie Buckley and all those people like her who are so dedicated to saving our crumbling history and thank her for all her assistance and support.

View more photographs from the photo-shoot at Newhailes>>