The Pineapple, Dunmore, Scotland

I vaguely remember being pulled as a wee lad from some very soft mud during adventures in a local wood.   Needless to say we never mentioned this nor the fact that our adventures were taking place on a private estate, to our parents.  This estate was the Dunmore Estate – the home of The Pineapple.

Believe it or not, during the 18th century, pineapples were actually grown in Scotland, ok not all over the place, but certainly on the Dunmore Estate.  Pineapples were a rare and exotic treat back then, only available to the very wealthy.  It is believed that pineapples from Dunmore graced the tables of Holyrood House in Edinburgh and other stately homes in Central Scotland.

The hollow south-facing wall contained a fairly sophisticated heating system, which pumped hot air through the cavities.  The urns you see on the walls were actually chimney pots.  This along with sloping glass and a mixture of warm horse manure and bark, created the required temperature for this tropical fruit to flourish in Scotland. .

The Dunmore Pineapple can only be described as one of the most unusual buildings in Scotland.  It is a huge stone replica of the fruit, beautifully carved to reproduce all the features of the real thing.  It sits on top of a garden pavilion erected in 1761 by John Murray the 4th Earl of Dunmore.  The pineapple was probably added around 1777 when the Earl returned to Scotland after serving as Governor of the colonies of New York and Virginia.

On the east coast of the American colonies, the pineapple was a symbol of welcome and often the planters from the West Indies, who had big mansions in New York and New England, would place a real pineapple on their gatepost as a sign that they were home and ready to receive visitors.  Murray returned to the Americas after the War of Independence as Governor of the Bahamas, where pineapples were a major product.  It is just possible that the stone Pineapple was erected during this time, which would be the 1780s or early 90s.

John Murray acquired the estate of Dunmore in 1754.  He was from a Perthshire family closely related to the Marquis of Athol from Blair Castle.  The village of Elphinstone Pans on the River Forth was renamed Dunmore and was rebuilt as a model village in the mid-19th century by one of John Murray's descendants.

The designer of The Pineapple however, has never been identified, although a number of names have been suggested.  It is thought that the designers and masons could have been Italian and left no available record in this country.  Others suggest that the family and possibly the designers were rather ashamed of this extravagant folly, and was not in the architects interest to advertise the fact he had anything to do with this strange design.

The Dunmore family sold the estate in 1911, thereafter The Pineapple and the buildings fell into disrepair.  In 1973 it was given to the National Trust for Scotland, restored recently, and is now in use as a holiday property.