A Visit to Two Charles Rennie Mackintosh Houses

This year I visited two houses designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Both distinct experiences.

78 Derngate is the only house in England designed by Mackintosh. It is well worth booking in advance for a tour, as you will get to hear some interesting historical details about the house. You will also be shown photographs of the house as it was many years ago, and compare these with how the house has been sympathetically restored today.

Before entering, visitors are asked to wear plastic overshoes – as if going in to perform a forensic examination. Once inside, you are allowed to move around the rooms freely, without touching anything.

This townhouse is designed to feel uncluttered even though it is remarkably narrow. Rooms are stacked on top of each other on several floors in more or less this fashion: one room at the front, one at the back, with staircase between.

The 1916 designs – particularly of the front ground floor room and the guest bedroom – still appear modern by today’s tastes over one hundred years after they were designed.

Later in the year I visited The Hill House. Built in 1902-3, with further additions of Mackintosh-designed furniture over the next ten years, I had wanted to see this house for a very long time. When I had the opportunity to visit, I was surprised to find out that it was shortly to reopen with a new conservation project/visitor attraction called ‘The Box’. Upon close inspection, you will see that the walls of the Box are a screen of steel mesh (like chain mail). Originally, visitors would have been able to experience the sight of Hill House against the Scottish landscape, but it looks likely that this view will be denied for approximately ten years while the damp house dries out naturally, shielded from the Scottish rain.

Although denied this view, another experience has taken its place. There are walk ways around and over the roof of the house, so that visitors can see the architecture from several vantages. I thought perhaps, that the Box would spoil the visit to Hill House, making it more of a gimmick. But I was not disappointed. Turning the conservation work into an attraction itself has been advantageous because it gives visitors such a unique opportunity to enjoy the house on many different levels (literally as well as figuratively).

Once inside, it is easy to ignore – nay forget – that the Box is situated outside, and therefore the steel structure in no way affects the experience of walking through the beautiful Mackintosh rooms. 

I walked around the house a couple of times and overheard another visitor say “I don’t want to leave”.

Who would?

Incidentally, items from the Hill House are sometimes loaned out to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. This was the case on my visit. So I visited the latter to see Mackintosh's Kimono writing desk. Another beautiful item, and easy to envisage standing in the drawing room of Hill House on the opposite side of the fireplace to the settle.