About
Standing at the heart of one of Scotland’s most important 18th-century designed landscapes Penicuik House was designed and built in the 1760s by Sir James Clerk, 3rd Baronet of Penicuik, with John Baxter the ‘elder’, a renowned builder of that period, responsible for many of Scotland’s most distinguished 18th-century country houses. Later extended with two large wings by the eminent Victorian architect David Bryce in 1857, the house quickly became established as one of the finest second-generation neo-Palladian houses in the country until a fire in 1899 devastated the roof and interiors and left the once-magnificent building in ruins. Penicuik House perfectly embodies the ideals of Palladian architecture in its simplicity and symmetry and is unquestionably one of the finest examples of this style in Britain today.