Old College (Raeburn Room)

Old College,
South Bridge,
Edinburgh, EH8 9YL

Find Old College on the Campus Maps

Beyond the South Bridge front of Old College, only a small part of the building’s orginal design by Robert Adam was actually built. The remainder was largely completed by William Playfair 1817-40 and the dome added by Robert Rowand Anderson 1877.

Building Background

The foundation stone of the present Old College was laid in 1789, with the original plan of the building prepared by Robert Adam who died in 1792 before the building had been completed.

Robert Adam’s original designs provided for a double quadrangle, but of this, only the east front and the north-west corner were to be built. After his death his brothers, James and William, supervised the remaining building work carried out in the 1790s. It was Robert Adam who was responsible for the magnificent vaulted entrance to the College with its monolithic Roman Doric columns (the largest single pieces ever cut from Craigleith Quarry).

The work on Old College was hindered by the Napoleonic Wars and it was not until 1816 that William Playfair, at the age of 27, was appointed to complete the building. Playfair made several alterations to the original plan, the most important of which was the removal of a proposed cross building which would have divided the existing quadrangle. Playfair was also responsible for the terrace with the flights of steps, the Playfair Library Hall - which now has his name - and the Natural History Museum (now the Talbot Rice Gallery).

The Old College Dome

Old College was always intended to have a dome. It was there in architect Robert Adam’s original designs, publicly displayed on the November day in 1789 when the foundation stone for The University’s new building was laid.

The intention to crown the building with a dome survived the death of Adam, when the money ran out and building operations ground to a halt. It survived the hiatus of the Napoleonic Wars, when construction remained on hold. In fact something closely resembling Adam’s dome is evident in the revised single Quadrangle designs by the young William Playfair.

However, it was not converted into reality when what is now known as ’Old College’ was completed in the 1820s; even the then substantial sum of £121,000 spent on the building was not sufficient to provide for it.

Thus Old College was to stand domeless for much of the 19th century, until The University approached the 300th anniversary of its foundation in 1883. The project was revived and a third architect was commissioned. Robert Rowand Anderson had been selected in the 1870s to design firstly the new Medical School Building in Teviot Place, largely the product of public subscription, and later the Graduation Hall, funded by William McEwan.

Anderson’s success with the Medical School obviously impressed the Dome Committee, established under the chairmanship of Sir William Turner, Professor of Anatomy. Moreover the money was now available, as Robert Cox, a lawyer from Gorgie, had bequeathed a sum to The University for exactly that purpose (amounting to £4,400 by 1886).

And so it was that a more substantial dome was eventually completed in 1887, at a cost of £3,700 and, with the money left over, John Hutchison RSA was commissioned to deliver ’a figure in bronze’. The following year, the statue of ’Youth bearing a Torch of Knowledge’, was duly put in place.

Eventually, 100 years after the plans were first drawn up, the College was completed and Mr Cox’s role in its completion was not to be forgotten, for nestling in the wall of the room under Anderson’s dome is a bust of ’a just and generous man , a learned author, an enemy of ignorance and superstition..’ and the person, of course, who made possible the erection of perhaps The University’s most significant landmark in the City.