The Auld House c 1830.
This watercolour was painted by an unknown artist for the Maxwell family and is one of a series showing views of the Pollok Estate c 1830. Auldhouse is depicted set back from the road amongst trees. A horse and cart travel along the road past cows grazing in the field in the foreground. The wolf in the left corner is a scrap stuck on the painting at a later date.
The oldest part of the 17th century mansion house consists of a crow-stepped L-shaped block and has the date 1631 engraved in the lintel over the fireplace. The house is said to be the second oldest in Glasgow. When the writer Hugh MacDonald visited in the 1850s he noted that; "it is beautifully situated on the margin of Auldhouse burn, a little streamlet that joins the Cart at a short distance to the northward. The building, which is of considerable extent, is the property of Sir John Maxwell of Pollok, in the possession of whose family it has been for many years...". The house became a children's home, and by the beginning of the 21st century it had been converted to flats.
Reproduced with the permission of the National Trust for Scotland
Keywords:
Auldhouse, Auldhouse Burn, country houses, cows, horses and carts, landscapes, mansions, Pollok Estate, watercolours