The story of the Pewter Corridor

Conceived and designed by both the 3rd Marquess and the architect Robert Weir Schultz in the late 19th Century, the Pewter Corridor was first shown on a plan for the extension of the west wing at Dumfries House in 1897.

Intended as a link on the first floor between the 18th Century side pavilions and the principal floor of the main house, it was also designed to be a colourful access route to one of the grandest additions to Dumfries House: The Tapestry Room.

The walls and domes were originally finished with a brightly coloured decorative scheme, typical for the Arts and Crafts period. As in any home, colour schemes come and go as fashions rise and fall and personal tastes change. In this way, the Dowager Marchioness Lady Eileen, upon moving back to Dumfries House in 1956, began to apply her more classical tastes in different areas of the house. The colour scheme in the Pewter Corridor was changed when Lady Eileen commissioned a grey oil based paint to be used on the walls and dome. The result was an immaculate, 'purer' space, which was a nod, perhaps, to the original Georgian era of the House.

The multi-coloured scheme may easily have been lost or forgotten, but for a small space to the bottom right of the Drawing Room door, where a tiny patch of the original paintwork was found to be still exposed, hinting at an earlier, more colourful aspect to the corridor. Further research ensued, and guided by a black and white archive photograph, Scottish Painting Conservators Fiona Allerdyce and Karen Dunbar performed the first delicate scrapings to reveal a trace of blue paint. A team from Historic Scotland got involved and quite quickly it became obvious just how multi-coloured the corridor had been. Historic Scotland had been generously offering their very limited resources to the project, it was soon apparent that funding would be necessary to employ a team of conservators to progress the project fully. 

The Clore Duffield Foundation enabled us to do this, and in June 2010 we hired Owen Davison and Sally Cheyne from The Conservation Studio to complete the conservation of the original decoration in the first segment of the corridor. Once enough of the original scheme had been exposed, a team of decorators began to replicate the scheme throughout the rest of the corridor, preserving all the previous layers, including the grey from the 1960s, intact underneath.

Now completed, the corridor once again forms a highly colourful and visually attractive link between the 18th Century house and the Grand Tapestry Room just as it was when first built at the beginning of the 20th Century.