Bowerswell
File:Bowerswell. La casa della famiglia Gray. Kinnoull Hill.jpgBowerswell (formerly known as Whistlecroft){{Citation |last=Douglas |first=Sheila |title=The Life and Times of Rosie Anderson |date=2003 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46nrm0.18 |work=The Flowering Thorn |pages=175–182 |editor-last=McKean |editor-first=Thomas A. |access-date=2023-09-05 |series=International Ballad Studies |publisher=University Press of Colorado |isbn=978-0-87421-568-7}} is an early-19th-century house on Bowerswell Road, Kinnoull, Scotland. It is a Grade B listed building and was the childhood home of Effie Gray; she and John Ruskin were married there in 1848.
After World War II, the house and surrounding grounds were purchased by Perth Council as a "living" war memorial; the house and 20 cottages in the grounds serve as sheltered housing.{{cite news|title=Bowerswell’s future|website=Daily Record|date=25 March 2011|first=Gordon |last=Bannerman|url=https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/local-news/bowerswells-future-2739652}}{{Historic Environment Scotland|cat=PLA |num=227195 |num2=NO12SW 910 |desc=Perth, Bowerswell Road, Bowerswell |mode=cs2 |access-date=22 June 2025}} The City of Perth Book of Remembrance for WW2 is housed in the building.{{cite web|title=City of Perth - Book of Remembrance WW2 (The 'Golden Book')|website=Imperial War Museum|url=https://www.iwm.org.uk/memorials/item/memorial/57663|accessdate=29 June 2022}}
Description
The house was described in the Perth Courier of 24 August 1809 as "lately built", likely by Perth lord provost Thomas Hay Marshall (who died at the property in July 1808),Scots Magazine (1808) and had a succession of owners before being sold to George Gray, a lawyer, and future father of Effie Gray, in 1827. It was rented to John Thomas Ruskin (grandfather of the writer John Ruskin) in 1809, but the Ruskin family never owned it.{{cite book |last=Brownell |first=Robert |date=2013 |title=Marriage of Inconvenience |location=London |publisher=Pallas Athene |page=21 |isbn=978-1-84368-076-5}} It is described at the time of Effie's childhood as "a Regency villa overlooking the city of Perth"{{cite book |last=Fagence Cooper |first=Suzanne |author-link=Suzanne Fagence Cooper |date=2016 |title=Effie: The Passionate Lives of Effie Gray, Ruskin and Millais |location=London |publisher=Duckworth |page=12 |isbn=978-0715641446}} (the Regency era officially spanned the years 1811 to 1820, though the term is commonly applied to the longer period of 1795–1837).
The Buildings of Scotland volume describes it as "a large house of 1848"{{cite book |last=Gifford |first=John |date=2007 |title=The Buildings of Scotland: Perth and Kinross |location=New Haven and London |publisher=Yale University Press |page=655 |isbn=978-0-300-10922-1}} and the Historic Environment Scotland listing also gives its date as 1848,{{Historic Environment Scotland|num=LB39388 |desc=BOWERSWELL ROAD BOWERSWELL |cat=B |date=20 May 1965 |access-date=20 June 2022 }} but these dates would appear to refer to a remodelling. It "was only about forty years old in 1842–44 when George Gray undertook an extensive rebuilding in that neo-renaissance style which John [Ruskin] was to assail so comprehensively in his books".{{cite book |last=Brownell |first=Robert |date=2013 |title=Marriage of Inconvenience |location=London |publisher=Pallas Athene |page=29 |isbn=978-1-84368-076-5}}
References
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Category:Category B listed buildings in Perth and Kinross