Hill House, Helensburgh

Helensburgh, to the west of Glasgow, was settled by businessmen whose wealth came from the industrialised city. In 1902, Walter Blackie, of the publishers Blackie and Son, purchased a plot on which to build a new home. At the suggestion of Talwin Morris, Charles Rennie Mackintosh was appointed to design and build Hill House.

Blackie was surprised at the youthfulness of the architect but, after visiting other houses Mackintosh had designed, was convinced he was the right person. Blackie stipulated that the construction could not be bricks and plaster or wood beam, or that the house have a red-tiled roof, as was traditional in the west of Scotland. Instead, Blackie asked for grey rough-cast walls and a slate roof; and that architectural effects ought to be secured by the massing of the parts rather than ornamentation. The requirements and non-traditional taste of the client allowed Mackintosh full rein for his design ideas.[5][6]

Before creating an elevation drawing or floor plan, Mackintosh spent some time in Blackie’s home to observe their everyday life. By analysing the family's habits, Mackintosh could design every aspect of the house according to the needs of each user. He believed functional issues should be solved before allowing the design to evolve.

The house is reportedly haunted by the ghost of Walter Blackie.[7] A former housekeeper reported seeing a tall, slender figure dressed in black with a long black cape moving from Blackie's dressing room to the White Bedroom. Upon entering the bedroom the figure vanished.[8] Witnesses have also smelled cigar smoke in the house, with no explicable source.[9]

The porous "box" surrounding the house, June 2019

The Hill House was designed and constructed by Mackintosh and his wife Margaret MacDonald for a fee of £5,000.[10] The exterior of the house is asymmetrical, which shows Mackintosh’s appreciation for A. W. N. Pugin’s picturesque utility, where the exterior contour evolves from the interior planning.

The exterior qualities of the building are nearly the opposite of the warm, exotic, carefully decorated and smooth interior. Again, Mackintosh relates to Pugin’s theory by minimizing exterior decoration to emphasize the interior design: the transition from the outside world into a more inviting interior space. Paint analysis of the harling on the exterior shows that it might have been left as an unpainted pale grey initially.[11]

Mackintosh selected Portland cement harling, then a newly introduced product, for the surface finish. This harling was found to be less durable than traditional lime harling, and by 2017, it was discovered to be in a precarious condition, putting the integrity of the whole building at risk. As a temporary solution, NTS has enclosed Hill House in a transparent porous "box," allowing some movement of air, so that the structure dries out gradually.[12][13]

One room of the interior of the house.

The mansion combined the Edwardian period’s traditional conception of the "femininity" of an intimate interior space with the "masculinity" of the exterior public world. To Mackintosh, bringing the "masculine" aspects to the inside would break away from the ornately decorated and "feminine" conventional interiors. This allowed him to convey different feelings and experiences depending on the purpose of each space. Mackintosh used different materials, colours, and lighting to perform a full experiential transition from one point to another.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Hill House, Helensburgh.

• www.nts.org.uk/visit/places/the-hill-house from the National Trust for Scotland, including opening hours and location information.
• www.greatbuildings.com with some exterior and interior photographs of the house.

• Glasgow School of Art
• Willow Tearooms