The Rink, Boundary Walls, Haddington and Lammermuir, East Lothian

Description

The Rink, designed and built in 1962 by Ian Arnott of Campbell and Arnott, is a Modernist single-storey, flat roofed, three bedroom house. The exterior is white painted brickwork with irregularly spaced wide framed timber glazed doors, large plate glass windows and broad timber eaves fascia boards. The house is connected to a garage by a linking wall and courtyard area with crazy paving. It is located within a 19^th century walled garden at the centre of the village of Gifford.

The long (east) elevation is mostly solid wall with few windows and a lower wall which encloses the open north entrance courtyard behind it. The (west) garden elevation is largely glazed and small remnants of the original garden wall create a patio area. There are irregular shaped bedroom windows on the south elevation. The house has a predominately flat roof which is punctuated by three steeply angled slated roof lights over the kitchen and two bathrooms.

There is a single-storey, flat roofed garage linked to the north of the house which has three sides and is open to the north. Its west wall is built using part of the existing 19^th century stone garden walls as its base. There are single open doorways to the south and east.

The interior has a Modernist open plan scheme largely dating from the 1960s where functional and living spaces are defined by part walls and bespoke shelving dividers. Multi-position cupboard doors further enclose separate spaces as required. Interior decorative finishes include natural and painted engineering brickwork walls and window cills. Interior timber surfaces include Junckers maple narrow board flooring, knotty pine panelling to walls and doors, and a narrow grooved hardwood panelling to the bedroom ceilings. Chipboard fascias act as cornices leaving a gap above for top light windows or hidden uplighters and curtain tracks. Door handles and ironmongery are also contemporary with the house.

The garden is surrounded by 19^th century stone walls to the west and south and an early 20^th century brick wall at the north. The south wall has a mid-19^th century doorway with a boarded door giving access to a small village green. There are decorative plaques from the early 20^th century set within the wall on the (south) village side.

Historical development

Built in 1962, the Rink was the first project of the newly formed partnership of Bill Campbell and Ian Arnott and was designed as Arnott's home. The house is first shown on the Ordnance Survey National Grid Maps (revised 1966, published 1967). It sits at the main road junction entering Gifford from the north and adjacent to the category A listed Yester Parish Church and graveyard (LB14697). It was built partly using the southern section of the walled garden and orchard of the category B listed Gifford Manse of 1830 (LB14697). The construction of the house punctured the east side of the walled garden retaining sections of the wall in its linear garden design and using the former orchard as its west facing garden.

The Rink was recognised by the architectural community and awarded a Civic Trust Award in 1965.

The Rink was occupied by Ian Arnott and his family continuously from 1962 until around 2018. Historic photographs from the 1960s owned by the architect illustrate that the house is substantially unaltered both externally and internally since 1962. The cladding of the angle rooflights was altered in the early 21^st century. Internally the only changes appear to be the addition of a woodburning stove in the formerly open fireplace (around 2016) and replacement of the kitchen and bathroom units, worktops and tiled floors after 2022.

Statement of Interest

The Rink meets the criteria of special architectural or historic interest for the following reasons:

It is a major example of an individually designed mid-20^th century Modernist house with a high-level of design quality externally and internally.

It is largely unaltered since it was built and has a high level of authenticity.

It was designed and built by a notable Scottish architect of the post-war period.

Its historic setting, which informed the house design, is largely unaltered and adds to the building's interest.

It is a rare surviving example of a bespoke house from the period which used pure Modernist design principles and high quality, innovative materials for the time.

Architectural Interest

Design

The Rink is a major example of an individually designed early-1960s Modernist house which survives in a substantially unaltered condition. The Modern Movement which first developed in the 1920s and 1930s introduced clean lines and unadorned architecture with minimalist design details with the aim of leaving historical precedents in the past. By the 1950s, the movement developed 'free planning' for domestic architecture where conventional planning gave way to small, open plan designs with designated public and private areas. The design of The Rink closely followed these minimalist, open plan principals and is characterised externally by a long horizontal profile of white walls and internally by unified spaces. In this house, Arnott followed internationally recognised examples such as Le Corbusier's Pavilion Suisse and Frank Lloyds Wright's use of materials to define changes in spaces. The influence of American house design, especially that of Marcel Breuer, which was characterised by interconnected spaces, both internal and external, can be clearly seen at The Rink.

The architecture practices of Peter Womersley, and Morris and Steadman were at the forefront of bringing the Modernist style to domestic architecture in Scotland in the early post-war years. Ian Arnott's design for his own house, was built at the height of interest in this style in the early 1960s. His design followed very similar principals to those of Peter Womersley who saw house interiors as "one entity" (The See-Through House). The Rink's floorplan defines its living spaces, bedrooms and service areas by part brick walls and shelving to retain as open plan a sense as possible. Bespoke dual purpose and hidden pocket sliding doors are cleverly designed to allow further temporary definition of the spaces when more privacy was needed. The open plan ethos was also incorporated in the design for the garage which used the existing garden wall and was open plan with no door.

The house is planned around a single aspect with large windows to focus on the west (garden) side while the functional and service areas were placed to the east and lit by rooflights. When interviewed in 2002 Arnott said of the Rink that -

"I started thinking about domestic living in terms of public/private, open/closed, considering a hierarchy of human activities ranging from public life, less public through to privacy and even solitude and this led me to think of space as extroverted or introverted and to think of expressing it as such."

Whilst The Rink is not of the first house to visually link interior and exterior spaces, it demonstrates a successful use of this design technique because the plan form is focused on the principal garden elevation. One well-placed low horizontal window effectively lights the kitchen worktop whilst retaining privacy from the road, and the low windows in bedrooms were set to allow views to the garden when sitting in the bed.

New modern conveniences, especially that of central heating, available to architects at the time, also contributed to the new informality in plan forms (Powers). The Rink's practical design incorporated latest technologies such as a Danish electric heating system which heated cold air via small diameter pipes allowing for minimal heat loss. The flat roof was designed to drain into an internal downpipe within the same cupboard as the heater flue to avoid downpipes cluttering the clean horizontal lines in the design. The rooflights over the kitchen and bathrooms both lit the rooms while their louvred glazing allowed for controlled evaporation of moisture from the house. The kitchen design included an integrated Cannon Nu-tone food mixer in the kitchen worktop. The mixer was rare in Britain and mostly sold in the USA, which illustrated Arnott's interest in the latest international design and technologies at the time of the design.

The interior detailing of the house features high quality modern design materials of the time including Junckers flooring, ceiling cladding and coloured Formica. The kitchen is partly separated from the dining room by a bespoke structural shelving unit which includes a hidden pocket cased door and venetian blind. The building, though substantially unaltered, has undergone some alterations to the kitchen and bathroom in the 21^st century. In 2021 the kitchen had Formica worktops, bespoke timber shelving and square terracotta quarry floor tiles. Images available online from 2023 show the kitchen units have been changed and the terracotta floor tiles have been overlayed with red and white tiles. The bathroom surfaces were also updated at this time. It is common in that interior decorative features of houses of this period have been altered over time so the lack of alteration to the exterior and interior of The Rink adds to its significance.

The interest of the designer is of special interest in relation to the building's design. John (Ian) Emslie Arnott (b.1928) studied architecture at the Edinburgh College of Art followed by a diploma in Town Planning. He was employed by Scotland's leading modern architect and town planner, Robert Mathew, during the 1950s and was project architect for the large urban planning scheme of Hutchesontown and Gorbals B in Glasgow.

In 1961, Arnott joined Eric Hall and Partners where he was senior architect for the Haddington Town Centre Renewal and housing regeneration projects throughout the town. Arnott went into practice with William (Bill) Campbell (b. 1929) in 1962 and the Rink was the first project of a partnership that continued until the 1990s. Their projects included housing, care homes and offices and the styles followed current trends to include Post-Modern styling in their largest project Saltire Court in Edinburgh in 1989. Arnott was also involved in planning the Edinburgh Business Park in the 1990s in association with Richard Meier and Partners and his long career produced significant projects in Scotland. His work is notable as some of the major examples of the prevailing architectural styles from the classic Modernist designs in the 1960s to the new historicist style of Post Modernism in the 1990s.

The Rink exemplifies a number of Modernist design principles such as clean lines, high quality modern materials and open plan living. While the house has undergone some small changes and upgrading of facilities since the 1960s, the overall lack of alteration is notable and adds to the special interest of the building.

Setting

The Rink is set near the centre of Gifford Village in a prominent and historic location and within Gifford Conservation Area. It was built using the east wall of a large early 19^th century walled garden in its linear design. This is an unusual use of an existing structure in Modernist house design where the setting has informed the plan form and spatial aspects of the house. However, the interplay of the external and internal spaces is a post-war Modernist design device which would have taken advantage of this particular site.

Its east elevation, which can be seen through the trees on entering the village from the north, is largely solid walls with minimal windows except for the horizontal low level window to the kitchen. This, and the long external wall that extends from the garage to the front door, recreate the solid aspect of the former 19^th century garden wall and retain the ethos of the earlier setting. All main windows of the house face the walled garden to the west, controlling the views from the house but also minimising the impact on the historic setting.

The flat-roofed, single storey design is a sympathetic to the adjacent listed 17^th century Gifford Church and its low profile, single storey design means it is barely visible in views from the church. The three steeply-angled rooflight towers, which emulate the church tower are the only elements obvious above the height of the early 19^th century boundary wall.

The immediate and wider setting is unchanged since the house was constructed in 1962 and this adds significantly to the special interest of The Rink in listing terms.

Historic interest

Age and rarity

Designed with characterful and innovative architectural details of the period which incorporated the Modernist design principals, The Rink is a major surviving example of a bespoke Modernist style house in Scotland. It was built by the architect as his own home and individual architect designed houses of the period surviving in such an authentic and unaltered state are rare as not many were built and many of those that do survive have been extensively altered. Comparable examples of contemporary Modernist style houses which are listed in Scotland include the category B listed Avisfield, Cramond by Morris and Steadman of 1957 (LB50793) and the category A listed High Sunderland of 1957 (LB50862) near Selkirk by Peter Womersley.

Designed in 1962, The Rink was built during the height of interest in this style and its authenticity and level of survival of original fabric is rare amongst buildings of this type and age many of which have been altered internally or extended.

The Rink was the first building Arnott designed in partnership with Campbell and was his only known detached domestic house and demonstrated the avant-garde direction the practice intended to take. Most of the subsequent commissions in Arnott's long career were large scale housing, town renovation projects and latterly office developments including the important commission for Saltire Court, Edinburgh, designed in 1988 and built 1992.

Social historical interest

The Rink is a major example of an individual architect designed Modern Movement house with a high degree of authenticity. Its survival in its largely unaltered condition helps to illustrate the changing social values and requirements for modern living in the post-war period.

Association with people or events of national importance

There is no association with a person or event of national importance.

External Links

Historic Environment Scotland Listing

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.