Lordship and Architecture in Medieval and Renaissance Scotland is the result of a second collaborative effort by the Baronial Research Group (the first resulted in Essays on the Nobility of Medieval Scotland, ed. K. J. Stringer [Edinburgh, 1985]). The book works within two distinct, established traditions of scholarship—architectural studies (particularly those dealing with castles) and studies on the medieval nobility—to produce a groundbreaking work that explores the “development and projection of … lordship and authority through … architectural patronage” (xx).

The fourteen essays that constitute the book, many of them written by leading authorities in their fields, are principally concerned with the architectural patronage of Scotland's noble families or kindreds, each representing a particular period and/or region and ranging chronologically between the early twelfth century (about the beginning of the reign of David I [1124–53]) and the middle of the seventeenth century. From Annandale under the Brus family, 1124–1296, to Caithness and Orkney under the Sinclairs in the late Middle Ages and from the western seaboard under the heirs of Somerled and the Lordship of the Isles to the Homes and the East March and the Gordons and the North-East, 1452–1650, geography and chronology are both wide-ranging and broadly representative of different regions and periods. The Gàidhealtachd, for example, is quite well represented here (though curiously there is nothing on Galloway under its native lords, the topic presumably having been treated fairly comprehensively elsewhere), and coverage is very evenly spread among the five centuries spanned by the work. Royal patronage and building, which has been frequently considered in other publications, is, for the most part, deliberately omitted here (save where it relates to the topic in question), although the final chapter on “Court and Courtier Architecture, 1424–1660” returns to this theme, central as it is to questions of Renaissance architecture, patronage, and kingship. Ecclesiastical architecture and patronage is perhaps underrepresented: Richard Oram's paper on “Prelatical Builders: A Preliminary Study, c. 1124–c. 1500” is the only one exclusively dedicated to this subject, although many other papers address this important strand within their particular mandates. The book is attractively presented with copious maps (of uniform design), line drawings, plans, and illustrations, many of which move beyond the stock views that we have grown used to seeing in recent years. Maps and illustrations are crisply reproduced and, for the most part, effectively placed within the text.

Drawing upon the fruits of genealogical, archaeological, art-historical, architectural, and, of course, historical inquiry, many of the essays will be of immense value to established and budding scholars as well as graduate students, and there is no doubt that the trends presented here should be valuable in stimulating new research. Several of the essays represent tours de force of scholarship and ought to become standard reading on the subject. One of the few papers in the collection to deal with domestic architecture, for example, “Domestic Architecture in the Lordship of the Isles,” by David H. Caldwell and Nigel A. Ruckley, is a groundbreaking analysis of this hitherto neglected subject, while Stephen Boardman's nuanced essay on “Clan Campbell and Architectural Patronage in the Fifteenth Century,” which encapsulates much of Boardman's recent work on this prominent kindred, demonstrates once again why he has established himself as a leading scholar of later medieval nobility in Scotland. Peter Corser's fascinating analysis of sites of timber castles in “The Brus Lordship of Annandale, 1124–1296” offers a reminder of the spectrum of lordship and lordly building in the period by examining earthworks of now-vanished structures, while Fiona Watson's examination of “Adapting Tradition? The Earldom of Strathearn, 1114–1296” explores native centers of lordship and challenges some of the conclusions of Cynthia J. Neville, whose scholarship on the medieval earldom of Strathearn has done so much to elucidate native lordship in medieval Scotland. Alan Young's survey of “The Comyns to 1300” explores the architectural patronage of Comyn lordship within a variety of contexts, including their relationship with the crown and the Bruces.

This is certainly a book that should find its way onto the shelves of everyone with an interest in medieval Scotland, medieval architecture, or the medieval nobility, although in the end it is not principally a book about architecture and will certainly not serve as a substitute for by-now classic works on medieval Scottish architecture like those by Stuart Cruden, The Scottish Castle (3rd ed., Edinburgh, 1981), or Chris Tabraham, Scotland's Castles (London, 1997). The real contribution of the book lies in its studies on the medieval and Renaissance nobility, and by adding the role of architecture as an expression of lordship and status to the growing literature on this subject, the book has made an important contribution to scholarship.