Changing rural geography of Scottish lowlands (1700-1820)

Abstract

We are accustomed, in this age, to regional planning, undertaken in conformity with the requirements of a national planning act, "by experts whose chief concern is to plan for the general good. A severe simplicity of line is dictated by economic necessity, and a desire to achieve fitness for purpose, rather than ostentatious show. Quite otherwise did the prosperous and ambitious Victorians embellish and decorate the works of their hands. It may be said that their excesses were a development from an earlier period of pretentious design, initiated in Scotland in the eighteenth century, when the landowners, becoming better acquainted with their more elegant English neighbours, awoke to a new sense of their dignity, as well as to the wretchedly backward and barren condition of their country.