Three women architects in Scotland you might not have heard of

Have you ever visited Keiss Castle or Forss Mill? Or, more likely (but unluckily),  an A&E department?

Scotland’s history has been significantly shaped by women, in culture, society, and the landscapes we can easily pass every day without a second thought.

So jump back in time with us, as we explore the impact of three women architects whose histories are worth knowing.

Lyndall Leet

Margaret (known as Lyndall or Lyn) Elisabeth Marion Follet was born in 1932 and raised in Northampton. In 1957, she moved to Caithness with her husband Geoffrey Leet, who had embarked on a career with the UK Atomic Energy Authority at Dounreay.

She worked on a range of projects in her early career, including with a practice on the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board and worker’s housing for Dounreay Power Station. But her later work on restoring historic buildings, such as Keiss Castle, is an overlooked legacy.

A passion for the past

Her husband, Geoff Leet, remembers:

“Estates need dog kennels and Lyn designed a few but the restoration of Castles became a passion. One example of this is Keiss Castle. As with her churches, Lyn’s work is invisible. One church she had a long association with was St Peters and St Andrews in Thurso. She liked to work with steeplejacks and learned to abseil to inspect the whole wall of a tower. She was shown this skill by a student on work experience! Lyn had always climbed on roofs, often surprising the men.”

Shane Rodgers, Lyndall’s former business partner, recalls Lyndall and the student disappearing one Friday afternoon to abseil down Thurso East Cliffs so that Lyndall would know how to do it; she was in her late sixties!

She set up courses in traditional skills such as lime, thatching, and dry-stone walling, inviting experts to teach them to local craftsmen to ensure the future of these crafts.

Lyndall undertook the quinquennial reviews (occurring every five years) of churches across the North East and was an Honorary Adviser to what is now Historic Churches Scotland, from 1996 to 2016.

Lyndall and the Leet Rodgers Partnership received many awards. This included the conversion of the derelict Forss Mill into flats for the Highland Building Preservation Trust, the restoration of the Mill of Forse as the North Shore Pottery and the Old Highland Railway stations at Wick and Thurso.

They restored and gave new life to the harbour buildings at Lybster Harbour, which opened as the popular Waterlines Heritage Museum in 2001.

Campaigning for the future

Lyndall’s passion for the buildings of the North East went beyond her work; she devoted her spare time to voluntary heritage organisations.

She was a Director of the Highland Vernacular Buildings Trust and in 2010, Lyn petitioned for the retention of the Dounreay Power Station Dome. She also campaigned for the protection of peatlands from the construction of wind turbines.

Lyndall had helped to set up the Society of Northern Architects and in 1993 became President of the Inverness Architectural Association. She contributed to Historic Scotland’s Technical Advice Note of 1996 on Earth Structures and Construction in Scotland.

A lot of Lyndall’s work came from word of mouth, and she left a lasting impression on many. There are many fond recollections of Lyndall, such as from her former colleague, Mia Scott:

“She was one of the people who introduced Caithness tradesmen to lime technology and she really worked with local tradesmen to educate them in conservation skills and philosophy … she was very proud of her ability to climb a scaffold when she must have been well into her seventies.”

Many fondly remember Lyndall’s skills and passion for conservation, as well as her sociable and lively personality. Although she died in 2017, the contributions she made to her communities live on in the local landscapes.

Justin Blanco White

Early women architects, such as Justin Blanco White, often came from progressive families who supported the idea of education and professional training for daughters.

Born in 1911, her father, George Rivers Blanco White, was a solicitor who defended suffragettes and ‘Irish conspirators’. Her mother, Amber Pember Reeves, studied at the University of Cambridge and later wrote on a range of topics.

Justin Blanco White’s career is vast, but her most memorable work began in 1947, when she joined the Department of Health for Scotland (DHS).

Experimental low-cost housing

During the 1950s, in her DHS post, Justin Blanco White worked on designs for experimental low-cost flats, the first two being Sighthill Green in Edinburgh and Toryglen in Glasgow.

Influenced by Dutch prototypes, Justin Blanco White was involved with trying out new prefabricated construction methods and fighting hard to incorporate floor-to-ceiling windows facing the sun.

In 1957, a further group of experimental houses were erected at Muirhouse, Edinburgh. As a technical assessors in the Scottish Advisory Housing Committee, her recommendations were ‘for the first time carried out in Scotland’. The scheme consisted of two four-storey blocks of maisonettes and smaller units for older and single people on Pennywell Gardens and Pennywell Medway.

Justin Blanco White was clear that the houses had to be suitable above all else for the families that were to live in them, prioritising functions such as soundproofing, adequate windows, cleaning and curtaining.

She advocated for women’s contribution to architecture, stating that:

“Women are well equipped to build dwellings for working-class people. Most women taking up architecture today have broad interests and a capacity for detail, essential qualities when building for poor people who cannot demand for themselves the things they require in their homes.” (Bradford Observer, 1938).

Transforming UK hospitals

In the early 1960s, the focus of Justin Blanco White’s work shifted to health care buildings. She was part of an interprofessional group that analysed hospital layout and design requirements. The result of research on in-patient care was published in 1963 and a prototype design built in conjunction with the Western Regional Hospital Board at Falkirk Royal Infirmary.

This layout became the model for many hospital designs, such as Glasgow Royal Infirmary and Greenock.

Justin Blanco White’s major contribution to hospital design was The Organisation and Design of Out-Patient Departments (1967), which became a standard work, used throughout the UK. She brought much original thought to this, using operational research techniques learnt from her husband.

The basis of the new-style outpatient department was that instead of moving between consulting, examination and treatment rooms, each patient stayed in one room while staff moved. This was a radical design change, allowing patients privacy and dignity.

In about 1970, Justin Blanco White led the team which developed the specification and signage design for the NHS. The team developed the script and colours the names for new specialities – all of which were standardised to provide consistency throughout the UK.

Justin Blanco White’s talents led her to the position of superintending architect in what later became the Building Division of the Scottish Development Department.

She was awarded the OBE in 1973. Though her work isn’t widely discussed today, her influence on standards of low-cost housing and healthcare buildings was significant.

Kathleen Prudence Eirene Blackett-Swiny

Kathleen Prudence Eirene Bagenal was born in 1886 and raised at a country house in County Wicklow, Ireland.

In 1918, Mrs Blackett-Swiny moved to Arbigland, the land inherited by her first husband William Stewart Burdett Blackett (who died in 1914 during the war). While residing there with her second husband, Mrs Blackett-Swiny built a remarkable dower house (a house set apart for a widow), which she moved into in 1935.

The Arbigland Estate lies within the Solway Firth SSSI and the Nith Estuary National Scenic Area. It has historic associations with the poet Robert Burns and is the birthplace of the American Naval Hero John Paul Jones to whom there is a small museum on the estate. The house itself is in a secluded spot on the beach.

The House on the Shore

Mrs Blackett-Swiny’s architectural story isn’t a typical one – rather than going through training, education or work; she was self-taught.

When constructing The House on the Shore, she assembled a large library of books on architecture, gardening and interior design and worked with Mrs Geraldine Monro in London, who specialised in styling interiors with the country house look for her clients.

The House on the Shore has echoes of Lutyens’ Greywalls of 1901 at Gullane East Lothian and the houses by Thomas Falconer in the Costwolds.

Constructed in an Arts and Crafts style with a semi-butterfly plan to take full advantage of the landscape setting, the house has rubble walls, a pair of central gables with slightly swept eaves and wide timber-mullioned windows.

She wanted to use local stone, so she demolished a row of cottages, Slate Row in Carsethorn, for reuse. The generous timber-framed windows were presumably made on the estate and were originally painted blue.

Mrs Blackett-Swiny always asserted that the house had only cost £2,000, a sum she made from her investment in De Havilland aeroplanes on the stock market. Although no professional architect has been credited, Mrs Blackett-Swiny’s great-grandson shared that a firm of Glasgow architects was employed to translate her vision of a Cotswold Manor House into drawings.

Estate workers built the house and later during the war interned prisoners of war worked on the paving and low walls in the new gardens she designed. They also built three stone, round houses; two as sheds and one a summerhouse modelled on the fruit houses in the 18th century walled garden of the big house.

A passion for the outside

Mrs Blackett-Swiny was a knowledgeable and energetic gardener. She restored the landscape gardens and the ornamental gardens around the house, with a significant collection of plants.

She laid out the sunken rose garden on the site of the earlier Arbigland Hall and the terraces overlooking the sea including a heath bank adjacent to the house.

If you came across the gardens today, you might also stumble across the gravestones of Mrs Blackett-Swiny’s succession of miniature poodles… all called Minky (Minky 1,2,3,4,5)!

An idyllic legacy

She opened her gardens at The House on the Shore to the public in 1939, an early participant in Scotland’s Gardens Scheme, and served tea to her visitors out of a huge silver tea urn from the drawing-room window.

The designed landscape was added to the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes in Scotland in 1987. The Outstanding designation as the setting for the Category A listed Arbigland House and the designation of the plant collection established since the late 19th century as being of high Horticultural Value are largely due to Mrs Blackett-Swiny’s work.

Her idyllic house and setting has featured as a film location in “A Risk Worth Taking” (2008), the film “Dark Nature” (2009)  and “The Wife” (2018) in which the house stared as a Connecticut summer home.

Once available as a holiday house, it has been taken back by the Blacketts as their family home following the sale of the main Arbigland House and grounds in 2000.

Can’t get enough of Women’s History?

From Dundee’s champion of social reform, Mary Lily Walker, to the often unknown stories of Black women in Scotland’s history, explore our range of blogs on women’s history today.

We would like to thank Anne Emerson for providing the research on this topic, as well as those who generously gave their time to share the stories of these three architects.