RCAHMS is pleased to announce that the computerisation of the architecture catalogues was completed in December 2004, and that all buildings information and details of items held in the Collections are now available in the Canmore database.

The objective of the Architecture Cataloguing Project (ACP), which commenced in 1996, was to transfer all information from the manual Architecture Indexes to the Canmore database in order to facilitate computerised access to data. This was the last stage of a long process during which records were meticulously standardised, corrected, upgraded and enhanced, a process which greatly increases their value to RCAHMS and the public alike.

The upgraded and enhanced records are made available to the public through Canmore where they can be queried, retrieved and studied. A supplementary element of the Architecture Cataloguing Project is the systematic linking of records in the database to corresponding records in Historic Scotland's database of listed buildings, enabling information relating to listed buildings to be made available through PASTMAP.

A further major achievement for the ACP was the recent completion of two externally funded projects, both of which ran for more than two years. One member of the team, funded by Historic Scotland, was responsible for cataloguing collection material for Category ‘A’ listed buildings in accordance with the Historic Buildings National Fire Database (HBNFD). The ACP contribution to the HBNFD was completed in November 2004 within the project deadline. In total, 31,858 new items relating to 1,522 A-listed buildings were catalogued, with a further 11,605 records updated to reflect current standards.

The Listed Buildings Location Project (LBLP), also funded by Historic Scotland, was carried out in four phases. A total of 27,925 new building records were added to the database throughout the lifespan of the project. 44,293 sites were updated/linked and a further 6,247 sites checked and verified. These figures include the linking of listed buildings to the Canmore database, the upgrading of National Grid References to within one metre accuracy, updating re-surveyed buildings and breaking the link between the Historic buildings database and the Canmore database for de-listed buildings.

Watch Tower of
St Cuthbert's Churchyard,
Lothian Road, Edinburgh,
view from NE, 1971.
(SC976112)

Watch Tower,
St Cuthbert's Churchyard,
Lothian Road, Edinburgh,
annotated sketch of north elevation, ground-floor
and first-floor plans, 1971.
(SC976113)

Churches and churchyards are well represented in the RCAHMS collections, and often associated with them are subsidiary buildings such as watch houses and watch towers. Many of these are classified as listed buildings by Historic Scotland, and provide interesting examples of architecture on a small scale, sometimes with attractive decorative touches as well as more basic features that testify to their original purpose. A few examples have been selected to show the variety of location and style of watch houses and watch towers in Scotland.

Watch houses and watch towers recall the macabre practice of grave robbing or body snatching, when newly buried bodies were removed from graves and sold to medical schools for use in anatomy classes. They were built to shelter and provide a lookout point for those guarding the burial ground from such depredations. In many places, societies were formed whose members undertook night-time guard duties for perhaps six weeks after a burial, receiving a fee from the family of the deceased.

As early as 1711 it was discovered that a body had been taken from the burial ground of Greyfriars Church in Edinburgh, and suspicion fell on the Incorporation of Surgeons. They denied any involvement, but similar incidents increased over the years. The medical schools of Edinburgh and Glasgow were given the right to use bodies of criminals for dissection, but, as the study of anatomy increased in the 18th century, demand eventually exceeded supply. During the first two decades of the 19th century, Ireland was used as a source of corpses for medical schools, because, there, the body of anyone who died a pauper could be bought for a small sum. But transportation was obviously difficult and unpleasant, and the money that could be obtained for supplying corpses provided enough incentive for some to risk raiding the churchyards at home. Demand surged as the study of anatomy flourished under successful lecturers such as Dr Robert Knox, and the activities of the resurrectionists reached their peak in the 1820s. The grisly activity was brought to an end by the 1832 Anatomy Act, which made available for dissection the bodies of workhouse paupers whose relatives did not claim the body for burial. Many watch houses therefore date from between 1820 and 1830.

The eight-foot high walls around the churchyard of St Cuthbert's Church, Lothian Road, Edinburgh date from 1738, when the Kirk Session authorised their construction to prevent access to the burial ground during the hours of darkness. But the walls proved an insufficient deterrent for determined grave robbers, and a crenellated circular watchtower, now an attractive landmark at the junction of Lothian Road with Kings Stables Road, was built in 1827. It is an elaborate two-storey building of cream ashlar, although only the upper story is visible from Kings Stables Road. There is a roll-moulded cill course at the first floor, and a moulded eaves course below the crenellated parapet. The door, at churchyard level, and the windows, are set in cavetto-moulded surrounds. Surprisingly, considering the purpose of the building, some windows are blind. St Cuthbert's watchtower is shown on Kay's 1836 map of Edinburgh, but on the 1853 Ordinance Survey map it appears as ‘Recorder's Office'. After a period of disuse, restoration was undertaken by Robert Hurd and Partners in 1990.

Far from being confined to the accessible hinterlands of the medical schools, however, the distribution of watch houses in Scotland is surprisingly widespread. A typical example of a small but strongly built rubble rectangular-plan watch house with coped apex chimney stacks is to be found in the small burial ground below Loth Parish Church, Lothmore, Highland. It is built into the northeast corner overlooking the sloping burial ground, and has a large window in the south gable. The door was in the west elevation. At the other end of the country, at Whitsome, Scottish Borders, the watch house in the Old Churchyard is also rubble-built. It has a grey slate roof, with raised stone skews, and the remains of a coped apex chimneystack. A low stone bench on the outside of the west wall was no doubt used during summer watches, while the rubble fireplace inside provided warmth during the winter. This listed building is typical of many watch houses, with its fireplace, chimney and bench, and it is dated 1820 on the lintel over the boarded timber door.

Watch House, Burial Ground, Loth Parish Church, Lothmore, Highland, view from SSW, 1993. (SC976114)	Watch House, Old Churchyard, High Street, Eyemouth, Scottish Borders, general view, 1961. (SC976115)

Many watch houses are plain single story buildings with rectangular or square windows, such as those in the churchyards of Old Boleskine Church, Highland and Symington Parish Church, Kirk Bauk, Symington, South Lanarkshire. The one at St Bridget's Church, Dalgety Bay, Fife, is similar, but has a 13^th century carved stone set into the door jamb. The watch house in the Old Churchyard, High Street, Eyemouth, Scottish Borders, with its weathered but beautifully moulded cill course and round-arched door and windows, is built almost entirely of fragments of tombstones, many of them elaborately carved.

Interesting variations in architectural detail and style may be observed. The watch house in the churchyard at Croy Parish Church, Highland, is of harl-pointed rubble, with a diminutive wallhead vent above the door. On each side of the wallhead stack on the north elevation there is a bull's eye vent, and a single similar bull's eye vent occupies the centre of the south front. Droved ashlar was used for the watch house at Oldhamstocks Parish Church, East Lothian. Built in 1824, it is enhanced by an eaves course and pedimented gables, and there is a weathered plaque in the east gable. The window in its north elevation is in the form of a pointed arch with intersecting glazing pattern that mirrors the church windows. In East Linton, East Lothian, the watch house in the churchyard of Prestonkirk Parish Church is an oblong rubble building with a piended slate roof, and an unusual crenellated gable end facing the entrance to the churchyard. The sliding door is flanked on either side by neat round-arched windows.

Watch Tower, New Burial
Ground, Old Edinburgh
Road, Dalkeith,
Midlothian, general view, 1975/6. (SC976122)

Watch House, Old
Graveyard, Bridge
Street, Saline, Fife,
general view, 1975/6.
(SC976121)

Although most watch houses are simple rectangular buildings, there are examples of hexagonal, octagonal and circular forms. At Edinkillie Parish Church, Moray, there is a hexagonal rubble watch house with its door in the centre of the north face, and two flanking windows. Its roof is of facetted local slate, with an apex ball finial. Sadly, no trace now remains of the small octagonal watchtower that occupied the corner beside the gate of the Old Graveyard, Bridge Street, Saline, Fife. Rubble-built with ashlar quoins, it has a gothic window facing the churchyard. A circular watch house, dated 1829, is to be found in the Parish Kirkyard of Banchory-Ternan, Banchory, Kincardine. This two-storey building of rubble and slate has a conical roof with a bell turret.

The picturesque setting of the Old Kirk and Kirkyard at Abdie, Fife is enhanced by two small rubble-built structures flanking the gateway. To the right of the gate, stone steps lead up to the loft of a small building with a wide entrance facing south. This building nowadays has the added interest of containing three carved stones, the Pictish Symbol Stone, known as the ‘Lindores Stone', a 14th century tomb-slab and a 15th century effigy. The building to the left has a chimney in the west gable, a door facing east towards the gate, and a small window in the south wall facing away from the burial ground. This has been interpreted as a watch house, although, dating from the early 18th century, it was built as offertory house. Elsewhere, earlier buildings were also altered for the purpose of guarding the burial ground. The watch house at the Old Parish Church, Glencorse, Midlothian, for example, is an 18th century building also thought to have been built originally as an offertory house. This churchyard is of particular interest because it was the scene of the gruesome prelude to the climax of Robert Louis Stevenson's short story, The Body Snatcher.

Eventually, many watch houses became tool stores for gravediggers or gardeners, and some were adapted for other uses. The simple rectangular harled Sunday School Room at Dores Parish Church, Highland, for example, was formerly a watch house. It has the appearance of a small house, with its two end chimneystacks and central door. In the New Burial Ground, Old Edinburgh Road, Dalkeith, Midlothian, the two-staged crenellated watchtower has been restored as a small information museum, one of the points of interest on the town trail. It is dated 1827, and was built by the Dalkeith Churchyard Association.

Thus watch houses and watch towers are very much part of our local and national history, and they add to the attractiveness and interest of our graveyards. Further examples of these, and also of similar buildings classed as session or offertory houses, and mort houses, may be found in the RCAHMS collections, which also hold a large collection of images and manuscript material relating to Scottish gravestones.

The relative positions of
the Tower and the Castle
are illustrated in this
dramatic 1822 aquatint
by William Daniell.
(Incidentally, the second
structure by the sea with
the pitched roof and crow-
step gable, referred to as
‘Howe Cot’ on a 19th
century plan, has since
been swept away by the
sea)

Detail of carved pendant.
Its subject matter
suggests the room may
have been used as a form
of chapel.

View of Kinnaird Head
Lighthouse from South.
Since this photograph
was taken in 1994, the
Castle walls have been
harled and whitewashed.

General view of
Lighthouse with
automated facility in
foreground.

Kinnaird Head is a bluff of land just North of the harbour town of Fraserburgh where the Aberdeenshire coastline bends into the Moray Firth. On it stand a 16th century castle that was converted into a lighthouse in the 18th century and an earlier structure on the rocks that shelve down to the sea, known as the Wine Tower.

Built in the early 16th century by Sir Alexander Fraser, the Wine Tower is a perplexing three-storey structure about which little is known. Externally unassuming and built of very rough masonry, the only entrance is via the third storey, originally reached by an external ladder shown in Daniell’s aquatint. Inside, each floor has one room with a vaulted ceiling. The room on the second floor is relatively well lit with a window in each of the walls. There is a fireplace in the North wall, and a trap door that leads down to the two floors below. The vaulted ceiling boasts three elaborately carved stone pendants, while three more reside in the window soffits. One has the royal arms of James V, helping to date the building to the first quarter of the 16th century. Another has a shield presenting the arms of the Fraser family, held in the claws of an eagle with a key in its beak. The third is in the form of an angel holding various symbols of Christ’s crucifixion including nails, hammer, and pierced hands and feet. In the SW corner, a narrow spiral stair leads up to what is now the roof. MacGibbon and Ross, in their five-volume ‘Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland’, have suggested the tower was originally one or two storeys higher, with a parapet and attic. The RCAHMS survey floor plans clearly show how external light was restricted in the lower two levels. The ground floor was probably used as a store, but may also have proved useful as a hiding place. It is also likely that this level was at one time connected to the 100 ft long sea cave directly beneath the structure, lending a further air of mystery. Of the explanations given for the tower’s existence, perhaps the most satisfactory is that Sir Alexander Fraser had it built as an occasional residence for himself and his Catholic wife, where he could be close to his newly created Burgh. Ultimately, its unaccommodating position and cramped internal layout may explain why a generation later his son, also Alexander, abandoned any further work on the tower and built the roomier castle for the same purpose, with the tower perhaps relegated to use as a wine cellar.

The four-storey Kinnaird Head Castle was built around 1570 during the construction of the harbour town now known as Fraserburgh. The Fraser family lost the majority of their wealth over the following century and the Castle changed hands a number of times. By December 1787, the newly created Northern Lighthouse Board was in a position to use the Castle as a base for their first lighthouse, the first in Scotland. A turret was built on separate foundations within the Castle walls on the instruction of the owner who did not want to cause damage to the corbelled parapet and rounded bartizans. The sympathetic results are attributed to the architect Robert Kay, while Thomas Smith, the chief Northern Lighthouse Board engineer, was responsible for the design of the light itself. Using 17 whale-oil burning lamps, each backed by individual reflectors made up of facets of mirror-glass and arranged in three horizontal tiers, it could be seen from 14 miles offshore in clear weather. The lantern in place today was installed in 1851 by Smith’s son-in-law, Robert Stevenson. Subsequent members of the famous Stevenson family of engineers would go on making alterations and additions to the light well into the next century.

The use of Kinnaird Head changed again in 1994 when it was sold to Grampian Regional Council by the National Lighthouse Board and became the official Museum of Scottish Lighthouses. David Stevenson’s 1902 hyper-radial light had been decommissioned three years earlier and replaced by an automated facility standing a good deal shorter beside it to the North. At the time of writing, interior redecoration work in keeping with the Northern Lighthouse Board’s specifications and colour scheme is underway as part of a continuing program of improvements at the site. These include the restoration of the Wine Tower’s turf roof, and the re-commissioning of Stevenson’s main navigation light on the Castle. The prefabricated tower and timber stockade is to be removed and relocated to another part of the Northern Lighthouse Board’s navigation network. The site is category A-listed by Historic Scotland.

The RCAHMS collection contains 150 interior and exterior photographs of Kinnaird Head Lighthouse. There are numerous drawings and manuscripts as well as images available online through the Canmore database. There are 50 photographs of the wine tower, including many showing details of the carved pendants. We also hold an extensive National Lighthouse Board collection of original plan, elevation and detail drawings for lighthouses designed by the Stevenson family that surround the coastline of Scotland.