Dunmore Pineapple

Interesting facts

Its overall height, from the base of the building to the tip of the stone fruit, is exactly half the width of the whole structure.

Every window in the octagonal pavilion is curved, down to the individual panes of glass, following the circular walls inside.

The windows and door of the pavilion are topped with Gothic ogee arches, an odd note on an otherwise classical building.

The garden wall the hothouse is built into is about 16 feet high and over three feet thick, holding back a sloping six-acre garden.

The upper floor once held two small cottages, known as bothies, where the estate's gardeners lived beside their hothouses.

A carved coat of arms on the building commemorates the 1803 marriage of the 5th Earl of Dunmore to Lady Susan Douglas-Hamilton.

Its builder, John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, was the last colonial Governor of Virginia before the American Revolution.

In the 18th century a pineapple was a costly rarity associated with power and wealth, which explains the giant stone fruit.

When the Dunmore estate was broken up and sold in lots in 1970, the Countess of Perth bought the Pineapple lot and gave it to the National Trust for Scotland.

In 1995 the Pineapple was ranked the most bizarre building in Scotland.

Why it is worth it

The Dunmore Pineapple is the most outrageous garden building in Scotland: a classical pavilion topped by a stone pineapple some 14 metres high, rising from the wall of an eighteenth-century walled garden near Airth. It was the creation of John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore. The date 1761 is carved on the keystone of the arched doorway, the year the hothouse and garden were built; the pineapple cupola itself is believed to have been added after the earl returned from Virginia, where he had served as governor, after 1776. The design has often been attributed to Sir William Chambers, though no signature confirms it.

The joke is carried off with great craftsmanship. Each of the stone leaves of the fruit was individually shaped and drained so that rainwater would not collect and crack it in frost, and the chimneys of the heating system were disguised as Grecian urns. The ground floor opens to the south through a Palladian Serlian arch with Tuscan columns, and behind it lay hothouses warmed by a furnace that sent hot air through cavities in the walls, enough to grow exotic fruit in Scotland.

In 1974 the building passed to the National Trust for Scotland, and the Landmark Trust restored it and now lets the pavilion and the two bothies either side as holiday accommodation. The walled garden, on a south-facing slope, has been replanted with an orchard and water features, and woodland paths surround it. The building itself cannot be entered by day visitors, but it can be admired from the garden, which is open to all.

Getting there

The Pineapple is on the Dunmore estate near Airth, off the A905, with a car park on site. Alloa is about 4 km away across the Forth, and Edinburgh Airport (EDI) is about 29 km away.

Dunmore Pineapple

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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