Dundas House

Dundas House stands on St Andrew Square in Edinburgh’s first New Town, a Neoclassical mansion completed in 1774 for Sir Lawrence Dundas by Sir William Chambers. The cream sandstone building follows Palladian lines inspired by Marble Hill House near London, with a grand front of Corinthian pilasters and a central pediment. Its rusticated ground floor and ashlar walls give the exterior a dignified air. The site once held a rural refreshment house called Peace and Plenty, where visitors took strawberries and cream on the old road to Stockbridge. James Craig’s 1767 plan for the New Town had envisaged a church here, but Dundas chose instead to build his townhouse. The house became a customs office in 1795, then passed to the Royal Bank of Scotland in 1825. The house is worth the journey for its architectural importance and civic role. In 1780 the writer Hugo Arnot called it “incomparably the handsomest townhouse we ever saw.” After alterations by Archibald Elliot, William Burn and John Dick Peddie, it gained a striking banking hall topped by a pierced blue dome with golden star-shaped skylights. A statue of John Hope, Earl of Hopetoun, was placed in the garden in 1834, shipped from Rome by sculptor Thomas Campbell. The dome’s pattern even appeared on Royal Bank of Scotland’s Islay series banknotes from 1987 to 2016. Today the building remains a category A listed property and the registered office of the Royal Bank of Scotland and NatWest Group. Inside, visitors find the 1857 banking hall with its circular dome and coffered skylights, a rare surviving example of mid-19th-century commercial design. The garden still holds the statue of the Earl of Hopetoun on its original plinth. Outside, the square preserves remnants of the old Gabriels Road at its edges. Behind the house, a new 1,000-seat concert venue called The Dunard Centre is planned for completion in 2029, while Dundas House itself continues in use as a bank. The contrast between the grand Neoclassical façade and the modern concert hall beyond shows how the site has adapted across centuries.