William Burn was born in Edinburgh on 20 December 1789, the fourth and eldest surviving child of the sixteen children of Robert Burn, architect, Edinburgh, and his wife, Janet Laing. Robert Burn was the owner of a small estate and was able to give his son an entrée into society and an understanding of the gentry who were to become the younger Burn’s main patrons.
William Burn was educated at the Royal High School and in 1808 was sent as a pupil to the office of Sir Robert Smirke in London. There he obtained experience in dealing with clients and the business of building. He was site architect for the Convent Garden Theatre and had to instruct the contractor Alexander Copeland, well-known in the building trade in London, and it was a salutary experience.
Burn returned to Scotland in 1811 as site architect for Smirke’s Kinmount, Dumfriesshire. He commenced business on his own account from the family yard in Leith Walk. His first independent commissions were public buildings (the earliest was for the assembly rooms in Greenock in 1812). In 1813 he was invited to report on the plans submitted for the layout of the Calton Hill area. This was soon followed by the commission for North Leith Parish Church. (Robert Burn was influential in obtaining this for his son). It was a large job and made his reputation, enabling him to establish an office away from that of his father at 78 (later 131) George Street, Edinburgh. He was also then in a financial position to marry and did so to Elizabeth (Eliza) MacVicar on 3 August 1815. The couple had seven children, although two died in infancy. The family moved to Hermiston on the Riccarton estate which Burn rented.
In 1816 Burn entered the competition for the completion of Robert Adam’s University buildings and was narrowly defeated by William Henry Playfair, whose uncle Professor John Playfair may have had an influence on the choice of architect. This engendered in Burn a lifelong dislike of competitions and of Playfair, the latter perhaps partly because Burn was the architect of the Tory landed gentry while Playfair was that of the Whig advocates.
Burn’s career as a country house architect began shortly after this. His skill in country house planning was one important factor which led Burn to have a larger practice than any other Scottish architect by 1830. His clients included the Dukes of Hamilton and Buccleuch, the earls of Haddington and Kinnoull and many other wealthy Tories. Camperdown was one of the earliest commissions in which his skill in planning came to the fore. Here the suite of family apartments occupied one wing and was separate from the public rooms which themselves formed a logical sequence as they were to be used. By 1840 he had already designed or altered over ninety country houses as well as numerous churches and public buildings.
Overwork led to health problems and Burn formed a partnership with his assistant David Bryce. In 1844 he moved to London to capitalise of the number of English commissions he was acquiring. He settled in Stratton Street from which he conducted his practice. Bryce was left in charge of the Scottish office. However the arrangement only lasted a few years before there was friction between the two men partly because they were being commissioned separately in Scotland and Bryce’s Scottish end of the practice became more profitable. The partnership was dissolved in 1850. Near the end of his life he formed a partnership with his nephew John MacVicar Anderson who continued the practice after his death.
In 1817-18 he had obtained his first commission as a country house architect which was to become his specialty. Almost certainly influenced by Smirke’s design for Kinmount, in 1817 and 1819 Burn produced two stylish designs for neo-Greek country houses, with top-lit central saloons, Craigielands and Adderston. The design of Adderston was further developed at Camperdown, Angus in the 1820s which borrowed from William Wilkins design of Grange Park, Hampshire. Camperdown was notable for its large scale, Greek revival design and for its planning. Further essays in the Greek Doric style at the early period are John Watson’s School and the Merchant Maiden hospital.
Burn was adept as a designer in a variety of different styles. He had acquired knowledge of Gothic detail through his work for Smirke on Lowther Castle. This was exploited in his church commissions – such as St John’s Episcopal Church, Princes Street, Edinburgh or at New Abbey church Dunfermline. He worked in the castellated style at Dundas Castle, Midlothian. The massing of Saltoun Hall, also castellated in style, was inspired by Smirke in its large cubic forms, although with its Gothic lantern lighting the central hall, it resembled Archibald Elliot’s Taymouth while other houses such as Carstairs, Blairquhan and Garscube, all dating from the 1820s, are more akin to William Wilkins’ neo-Tudor Dalmeny. At Carstairs some details were more Jacobean than Tudor and by about 1825 Burn had made the Jacobethan manor house his speciality. Dupplin, Perthshire and St Fort, Fife were according the David Walker ‘the most accomplished neo-Jacobean houses built in the United Kingdom before 1830’.
In 1838 Burn was commissioned to complete Harlaxton, Lincolnshire begun by Anthony Salvin. To what extent the continental baroque interiors were already in place is not known but it led to a series of ‘magnificent’ (DNB, Walker) neo-Jacobean houses for example Falkland, Fife and Whitehill, Midlothian and a number in England and Ireland, the last in the series and the largest being Dartrey, Co. Monaghan.
Burn also developed a picturesque style for the smaller country house. He built several of these in Perthshire, the most notable being Snaigow. Burn came into contact with Sir Walter Scott. Through his influence, Burn secured the patronage of the Duke of Buccleuch. He undertook a series of jobs for the 5th Duke starting with alterations at Drumlanrig. He went on design several good churches on the Buccleuch estates as well as work at Bowhill and Granton. To Scott’s guidance, a change in thinking by Burn has been attributed. Scots vernacular elements start to appear in his buildings (for example in the alterations at Lauriston, Midlothian) and by the mid-1830s he was making additions to houses in a Scottish late 16th century style. This change is apparent in Milton Lockhart and at Tyninghame. Gradually the more fully developed Scottish Baronial style came to be used though it was more fully exploited by David Bryce rather than by Burn himself.
Burn continued to turn out countless houses in Elizabethan, Jacobethan or Scottish vernacular styles. He could also produce competent designs in a classical or Georgian manner. His interiors of the 1820s and 1830s were relatively simple with some good Jacobean ceilings. Interiors were generally relatively simple though some had good Jacobean ceilings. His later interiors recreated different ‘period’ styles, for example high Baroque at Harlaxton, although the responsibility for some of the later interiors may have rested partly with David Bryce.
After Burn moved to London he contacted Robert William Billings and persuaded him to undertake ‘The Baronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Scotland’ (published 1845-52) which was to become a vital source book for the Scottish Baronial style. After the move to London, Burn’s later houses rarely matched the significance of the earlier houses, but some of the best were in Scotland or for Scottish clients: Poltalloch, Argyll, Dunira, Perthshire and Buchanan, Stirlingshire. The finest building of his later years was Montagu House, Whitehall in the French chateau style for the Duke of Buccleuch.
The importance of Burn’s houses also lies in their internal arrangements. By 1830 his houses were usually two stories in height with hall-corridor plans with symmetrically arranged main rooms all hidden from sight from the entrance. The private block was usually stepped back, creating a sheltered private garden area while the service block was usually at right angles to the main house. The service blocks were neatly planned with male and female servants kept strictly separate.
Although his practice was largely based on country houses, Burn continued his general practice throughout the 1830s. He pioneered the Italian palazzo style in his 1834 New Club design, inspired by a visit to London where the neo-Greek was being superseded by the Italian Renaissance by Charles Barry and his circle. This style spread to the design of banks, insurance, hotel and other commercial buildings and was developed by Bryce and others throughout the 19th century. Burn sometimes broke with tradition and designed public buildings in the Jacobethan style, a notable example being Madras College, St Andrews or in the castellated style such as Inverness County Buildings.
In his ‘Memoir of the late William Burn, fellow’ Thomas Leverton Donaldson described Burn: ‘frank and plain spoken, occasionally even to roughness… no flatterer … somewhat impulsive and gifted with great shrewdness and common sense… he was a man of the highest integrity and independence, and so far from leading his clients into any needless or extravagant outlay, he would demur at any expense beyond his employers’ means’. However he was very patient with his clients who could sometimes be idiosyncratic. He rarely entered competitions and never exhibited at the Royal Academy. He never allowed his work to be published and refused election to the Royal Scottish Academy, rather than exhibit. He kept the knowledge of the planning of a house confidential, the information imparted only to the client. He did accept some public offices: on the retirement of Edward Blore he became consulting architect to the government of Scotland and in that capacity undertook the rebuilding of King’s College, Aberdeen amongst other commissions. He was the main juror in the Whitehall competitions in 1857 and 1858. Although George Gilbert Scott was placed second in the competition Burn awarded the commission to Scott because he thought the plans were the most suitable. This sums up his attitude to design: fitness to purpose was paramount above all other factors.
Colvin considers that Burn ‘cannot be ranked as a great architect’. His output was perhaps more impressive than the actual designs. His early neo-Greek buildings were pioneering in Scotland but they are derivative. After about 1840 his Gothic churches are standard Gothic revival in style. His Jacobethan houses are often dull and repetitive in detailing. However it is the convenient planning of his houses which make his work remarkable. His career which spanned the whole course of nineteenth century architecture from Greek revival to Scottish Baronial is also exceptional.