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Hamilton Palace was a country house in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, Scotland. It was the seat of the Dukes of Hamilton and is widely acknowledged as having been one of the grandest houses in the British Isles.[1] The palace dated from the 14th century, was rebuilt in the Baroque style between 1684 and 1701 and was subsequently much enlarged in the Neoclassical style between 1824 and 1832.[2]
The building at the core of Hamilton Palace was a 14th-century tower house known variously as 'The Orchard' or the 'Castle of Hamilton', which was the seat of the Hamilton family.[6] The earliest reference to a castle at Hamilton is in a charter of 1445, when James Hamilton was created first Lord Hamilton. When the palace was demolished in the 1920s, the remains of walls up to 2.7 m (8 ft 10 in) thick (compared to 0.9 m (2 ft 11 in) elsewhere in the building), were discovered in the north-west quarter, clearly indicating the defensive nature of the medieval core of the palace. In 1451 the medieval parish church of Hamilton (which stood to the east of the later palace) was promoted to collegial status by Lord Hamilton.[6] 'The Orchard' was the object of much destructive attention on the part of royal armies in the period between 1565 and 1579, suffering damage in a siege of 1570 during the Marian civil war due to James Hamilton, Duke of Châtellerault's support for Mary, Queen of Scots.[6] The castle was damaged again in 1579 on the occasion when Cadzow Castle was destroyed and left abandoned. It accommodated King James VI on a hunting trip in 1589. 'The Orchard' was rebuilt and enlarged in 1591 on a quadrangular plan and named the 'Palace'.[7]
A new north front had been planned by James, 5th Duke of Hamilton in the 1730s, and extensive plans were prepared by William Adam. The Duke's early death and the significant costs involved prevented the plans from being executed, but significant programme of interior decoration was carried out in the east wing of the palace under Adam's supervision.[9] Modifications and additions continued during the next century, including the purchase or exchange of land surrounding the palace, enabling extensive landscaping to take place.[10]
The new palace provided an appropriate setting for a number of magnificent social events: in 1831 it was visited by Marie Thérèse of France, the eldest child of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, while in 1843 Henri, Count of Chambord visited the palace and a grand reception was held there following the marriage of the future 11th Duke to Princess Marie Amelie of Baden. In 1851 the palace was visited by Victoria, Duchess of Kent (the mother of Queen Victoria), and in 1860, a great crowd gathered in the park to catch a glimpse of the visiting French empress Eugénie. A grand ball was held at the palace in her honour.[12]
The 12th Duke's trustees were given power to sell the Glemham Estate and apply the proceeds, and that of some moveable property (including the Duke's yacht), towards paying off the debts on the Easton Estate. The Arran and Easton Estates, along with their income, passed to Lady Mary and her descendants, while the Hamilton and Kinneil Estates passed to the 13th Duke, who took on over 1 million in debts, which took him until July 1908 to pay off. The trust disposition and settlement of the 12th Duke also stated: "with reference to Hamilton Palace, which is not now used by me as a place of residence, that it shall be in the power of my said trustees if they, in their sole discretion, shall think it advisable to do so, to entirely displenish and dismantle the palace, and take down and remove the building, or allow the same to fall into disuse". In 1889 the 12th Duke had leased to the Bent Colliery Company (who owned the Hamilton Palace Colliery at nearby Bothwellhaugh), the coal under the Low Parks, to be worked on a system, known as the 'stoop and room' method, which would have left Hamilton Palace and the nearby Mausoleum supported by the pillars of coal known as stoops.
By the 20th century large and ostentatious country houses had fallen from fashion, partly due to the prohibitive cost of their upkeep. Hamilton Palace had long ceased to be a residence of the Hamilton family. The 13th Duke had been paralysed in 1890 by a rare tropical disease and considered the huge palace unsuitable as a modern residence, preferring to live a rural life at the smaller Dungavel House in Lanarkshire. The palace had not been updated since 1876 and could not be brought up to date and maintained with only the income from the Hamilton and Kinneil estates in central Scotland that the 13th Duke had inherited.[18] In July 1914 the Duke and Duchess hosted King George V and Queen Mary when they visited the palace, which was marked by a grand reception.[19] In June 1915 the Duke lent part of the palace for the accommodation of soldiers and sailors who had been injured during the First World War and discharged from hospitals and convalescent homes. In November 1915 the 12th Duke's trustees granted the Bent Colliery Company the authority to work the coal seam beneath Hamilton Palace.[20]
In June 1919 the trustees petitioned the Court of Session for authority to sell the contents of Hamilton Palace and then demolish the building.[3][nb 1] The trustees had been advised that the coal workings then in progress beneath the palace would damage and might ultimately destroy the fabric of the palace, and so - with the approval of the 13th Duke - they had decided to demolish it. Permission was granted by the Court of Session on 12 June 1919. At this time, the magazine Country Life featured a number of articles on the palace and a quantity of photographs were taken by A. E. Henson, the magazine's staff photographer, to accompany the series. As such they represent an invaluable record of the palace before the sale of contents and fittings and its demolition.[21]
The sale of the Hamilton Palace Collection took place from 4 to 7 November 1919 took place at Christie's. The sale raised 232,847 (equivalent to 11,383,965 in 2021) and included furniture, porcelain, silver plate, tapestries, jewellery and paintings by van Dyck, Rubens, Rembrandt, Reynolds, Romney, Raeburn, Delacroix and Winterhalter. The remaining contents of the palace - 572 lots including wood panelling, furniture, porcelain, carpets, curtains, sculpture and fittings - were sold at the palace from 12 to 14 November 1919, raising 29,000.[22][23] In May 1920 Hamilton Town Council considered purchasing the building from the trustees, with a view to restoring it and converting it into flats for public housing, while in December of that year the Duke and Duchess of Hamilton gifted 22 acres (8.9 hectares) of ground at the south front of Hamilton Palace to the town council for recreational purposes[24][25] In October 1921 the building was sold for 7,500 to the Edinburgh building contractor William D. Lillico for dismantling and demolition, with demolition work commencing in November 1921. The palace was so solidly built that it took far longer to dismantle and demolish than Lillico had expected. When the travel writer H. V. Morton visited Hamilton Palace in 1927 or 1928, he found that the roof had been removed, but that the black marble staircase and the bronze Atlantes were still in place in the now soaking interior. The last sections of the palace were demolished in 1932.[4][5][26] In July 1922 Hamilton Town Council purchased 750 acres (300 hectares) of the Hamilton Estate, including Hamilton Mausoleum, the stables and the riding school, from the trustees for 20,250.[27]
In line with his grandiose enlargement of Hamilton Palace, Alexander, 10th Duke of Hamilton planned to redesign or replace his family burial vault which stood close to the east of the palace in the aisle of the old and dilapidated Hamilton Collegiate Church. The architects David Hamilton and Henry Edmund Goodridge both produced designs for a chapel and mausoleum on the medieval church site. Neither came to anything and in the end, in 1848, the commission eventually fell to David Bryce to build Hamilton Mausoleum on a fresh site 650 feet (200 metres) northeast of the palace.
The site of Hamilton Palace is now occupied by the bowling pavilion, bowling greens and car park of the Hamilton Palace Sports Ground. Most of Hamilton Palace's grounds were incorporated into Strathclyde Country Park. When the park was being constructed in 1974, vaulted cellars were discovered which may have belonged to the palace. However, these were not excavated but instead infilled with rubble. Hamilton Mausoleum still stands in Strathclyde Country Park and tours can be booked at the nearby Hamilton Low Parks Museum. The black marble chimneypiece and chimneypiece wall of the palace's Old State Drawing Room is on display in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. The Dining Room is on display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Five panels of wrought iron railings from the palace grounds can be seen outside Hamilton College. The remains of the tree-lined "Great Avenue" that linked Hamilton Palace to Chatelherault hunting lodge can still be seen. These give the visitor a good indication, particularly from Chatelherault Country Park, of where the palace stood.
The site of what was once Scotland's largest and most magnificent country house, replete with the country's greatest-ever private collection of art treasures, is today occupied by a modern commercial retail park and road system dating from the 1990s, just to the west of the M74, Scotland's busiest motorway. The sheer contrast in style and setting between the palace complex which developed over the centuries and what now exists in Hamilton Low Parks could not be greater. This contrast provides a special challenge to re-create this one-time treasure-house and its parklands from old photographs, drawings and manuscripts, and especially from images of its priceless collections which have found their way around the world.
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