William Adam and Antiquity: an Arcadian Retreat at Arniston?

In May 1725 Robert Dundas (1685–1753) was forced to resign his post as Lord Advocate, the government’s chief legal officer in Scotland, for his opposition to Sir Robert Walpole’s controversial Malt Tax. This turbulent event seems to have prompted thoughts of retirement from politics and retreat to his ailing father’s estate at Arniston in Midlothian. With the prospect of spending more time with his expanding family, Dundas commissioned William Adam to carry out an extensive classical remodelling of the Arniston towerhouse and its surrounding designed landscape in the manner of a Roman villa. This chapter reviews the fragmentary documentary and physical evidence of the first thirty years of the new Arniston, focussing on the garden and landscape, but in the context of a closely integrated scheme for the house and a broader revival of interest in the culture, art, architecture, and gardens of Ancient Rome.