Historic buildings tend to be all formality: public statements of style and substance, set out for all to see and, often, only a select few to occupy.
Today we admire formality as much as ever but we use buildings very differently. Our relationship to landscape, in particular, as enabled by long-span structural openings, glass and draught seals, is radically-different: we like to spill-out into our landscape and we like our new, modern, in-between spaces we do it from.
The domestic villa, repaired and opened-up to its sunny back garden via a back extension, represents a sweet and appropriate marriage between conservation and modernism. Here, at the Burgh Halls, the groom is grander, a conglomerate of buildings that are of the greatest historic and social significance to the Royal Burgh of Linlithgow – the town’s focus and gathering-place, set against the Royal Palace, and great Kirk of St Michael, behind.
The present set of buildings date first form 1668, being constructed to replace the old Tolbooth which Cromwell’s troops destroyed. The site has been added-to and adapted, to suit the needs of the community, over the intervening centuries. By the end of last century it was a dim and dingy warren, and the project opened-up and connected the offset floor levels between the two buildings via a light-filled, open stairwell and lobby.
Behind the Burgh Halls is a long, sunny garden, set into the slope of the Palace “Peel”. The Halls were barely connected to it, their rear wall almost imperforate, but they now spill out into the garden, both from the entrance lobby via a café and garden room, and from the upper rear hall, onto a terrace, through three large French windows.
The Halls are transformed in use: children run through the building and into the garden, community events move between spaces, brass bands play in the garden to audiences on the terrace, or folk bands from the terrace to audiences in the garden. Marquees will be erected, bouquets thrown from the terrace and the senior citizens’ tai chi class, on a sunny day, opens the doors and moves out into the sun.
