A magnificent early 17th-century merchant's house in Edinburgh, Scotland, has been remarkably restored by two architects who have made it their home.
Dating back to around 1610, the stone house is located in the centre of Leith, a busy port area of Edinburgh that was once its main port. It is one of the oldest houses of its kind still standing in the Scottish capital, and retains architectural hallmarks of its time, including an internal stone staircase, beamed ceilings imported from Scandinavia, and half-sash windows, writes mansionglobal.com.
The original builder was Andrew Lamb, a merchant who was probably a relative of the Andrew Lamb who welcomed Mary, Queen of Scots, when she fled France a generation earlier, according to Scottish history.
“Lamb House“, as it is known, was located near the riverbank where ships unloaded their cargo. It was divided into four apartments where Edinburgh merchants could stay to do business while their ships were in port, and the street level was reserved for small shops, owners Kristin Hanesdottir and Nick Groves-Rains said from the lounge of Lambs House.
“It was very sophisticated for its time. It was one of the grand houses in Edinburgh,” says Groves-Rains.
The couple first put the property on the market with Ben Fox of Savills earlier this month, with a recommended price of £3.75 million (€5.4.3 million).
Today, the walled property consists of the original structure, now a detached house; an added extension, rented out as office space; and an outbuilding used as a holiday home. It also includes a large Renaissance-style garden and two car parks.
Hanesdottir and Grove-Rains, who run the architectural firm Gras, bought the property in 2010 from the National Trust, saving it from developers who had hoped to turn it into a series of homes. It had also been saved before, in the 1930s by conservationist Marquis of Bute, so despite decades of neglect, it had not been completely abandoned, the couple said.
They added the extension to the main house and a three-bedroom guesthouse shortly after, although both were designed to look as if they could have been built centuries ago. The restoration of the main house took some time and was completed in 2016, during which time the extension served as a studio for the couple’s architectural practice.
Together, the extension and main house cover 8,000 square feet, and the home includes seven bedrooms, two of which have en-suite bathrooms and walk-in closets. There’s also a library, several reception rooms and sitting rooms, a kitchen that opens onto the living room, plus a back kitchen and an artist’s studio with a “magenta” roof.
Fortunately, the main structure has been relatively intact, although a few unsightly additions have been added over the years. “The house was built pretty much as it is,” Groves-Raines said.
That includes the stone walls, the timber ceiling, the four-story spiral staircase in the center of the home and the huge fireplaces on each floor. The windows had to be restored, as did the floors and various missing or faded details.
Hanesdottir and Groves-Rains brought timber from Siberia for the floor; leaded glass from Hungary for the windows, and cast iron from a local foundry for the metalwork. All the materials and designs were chosen to imitate the original as closely as possible.
„Everything was done by hand, all the metal parts, the latches, the hinges, the cast iron gates. "Even the nails were made by hand," Groves-Raines said.
Each floor had a fireplace in its center, and each apartment consisted of a larger living room and a smaller room, which would have been the bedroom in the original apartments, they said.
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