To see how artificial intelligence interprets Scottish architecture, a colleague typed in a few words and his screen spewed out a medley of vertiginous stone structures, turrets and gables, straight out of The Traitors. The Scots (or Scotch) baronial style, as it is known, appears to have a stronger claim to Scottish identity than many would care to admit. 

In the 1820s, when the Union was arguably at its strongest, this new, romantic version of Scottishness emerged, thanks largely to Sir Walter Scott, who was not only a hugely popular storyteller of Scottish history but was also an architectural radical, using his own country pile to experiment. Merging forms and imagery derived from the real or imagined Scottish Highlands and the country’s legacy of thick-walled, fortified tower-houses, this was a reaction against the international style of its day – the austere, symmetrical palladian or revivalist Greek architecture best seen in the work of Robert Adam or Thomas Hamilton.  

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