Replicas, Revivals and Restorations: a Scottish Political Miscellany

Architectural revivalism is generally associated with both the revival of classical models as a common inheritance and, afterwards, with Romanticism and its accompanying national movements such as the Gothic Revival. Scottish architectural revivalism is usually characterised by the 19th-early 20th centuries (neo-castellated) Scotch Baronial style which replicated specific architectural features of historic buildings. This article broadens that scope of analysis by considering revivalism and the choice use of replicates within Scotland across the centuries. Replicates existed c.700CE on Iona island, while revivalism was deployed repeatedly: Iona’s “Celtic” High Crosses were reproduced (in variant form) in the 14th-15th centuries within Gaeldom, and once again during the 19th-20th centuries Celtic Revival. By referencing bygone periods of strength and influence, revivalists adumbrated a political message of greatness, embracing cultural and national identities. In Scotland, stateless from the 18th century, revivalists also expressed conflicted or dual identities. Additionally, when Scotland’s historical resources were considered unsuitable, other models were imported. The European Counter-Reformation church of the Gesù was used a model for James VII & II’s Canongate Kirk (1688); whereas the Tudor Gothic style was imported from England during the Napoleonic period of high British nationalism, evoking and celebrating a British past that never existed.