Built for a pretender to the Scottish throne, consumed by a coalfield: The doom of Hamilton Palace

‘Whether decay and disappearance are to be the fate of the whole batch of our oversized country seats is too early to decide, but the doom of Hamilton Palace is imminent.'

So read the eulogy from the opening paragraph of H. Avary Tipping’s 1919 series of articles in Country Life on the sprawling Lanarkshire landmark.

The Hamilton family occupied the hugely-profitable land — that the palace of the same name stood on — since the family were gifted it by James II of Scotland, sometime after 1452. The first known building on the site of the aforementioned Palace dated to 1591.

While the original house was substantially added to over the ensuing centuries — most notably by the 3rd Duke and Duchess, who added a grand entrance portico, executed by James Smith, the like of which had never been seen in Scotland before — it wasn’t until the 19th century that Hamilton Palace was to reach it’s vast, some may say bloated, size that would prove too excessive to maintain in the ensuing one.

Alexander Hamilton was, it would be fair to say, flamboyant (think George IV, and you're not far off). He had spent most of his 20s in Europe, predominately Italy, amassing an impressive collection of artefacts using the allowance his father awarded him. That collection would grow exponentially, firstly after his marriage to a distant cousin, Susan Euphemia Beckford, of Fonthill Abbey, and secondly, in 1819, when his father died.

Alexander believed that he was the true heir to the Scottish throne (his ancestor had married the daughter of James II) and thus went about turning his castle into a palace. The cost of expanding his already-substantial home was leveraged against his newly-inherited wealth from the coal fields on his newly-inherited land.

No expense was spared. Work began in 1824 and the finished structure was said to exceed Buckingham Palace in length. There were more than 140 rooms in which Alexander and Susan displayed their mesmerising collection. This included the Duchess of Hamilton’s library, inherited from her father, William Beckford.

A new double staircase was carved out of black marble; a vast Stone Hall was erected in order to display Alexander’s ancient marble busts and statues; and a Grand Egyptian Hall was build to house his treasures from that land.

However, Alexander went a step further, also commissioning a mausoleum in the grounds and ordering the re-internment of his ancestors in its lower levels. Perhaps inspired by the acquisition of the sarcophagus of an Egyptian queen — ostensibly for the British Museum — he left instructions in his will for his remains to be mummified and placed in the same coffin. Sadly, though he tested the sarcophagus for size multiple times, while alive, he failed to account for his mummified size. And so it was that after his death in 1852, the man who was unflatteringly described in one obituary as 'the proudest man in England' was laid to rest with broken legs (the surgeon charged with mummifying his remains was forced to snap them, in order to shoehorn his body into the ancient resting place).

And more misfortune was to follow. The next Duke had little interested in Scotland or, indeed, the UK, choosing to live, instead, in Paris and Baden. When he died suddenly in 1863, the title passed to his 18-year-old son, William.

The 12th Duke found himself in charge of a vast property portfolio with little capital to maintain it. The pressure was temporarily lifted by his racehorse, Cortolvin, who won the Grand National in 1867, but it soon fell upong the young aristocrat to ‘sell the family silver.’ Fortunately, there was a lot to sell.

Christies hosted the gargantuan sale in 1882 which included gold and silver wares, furniture, fine Japanese and Chinese porcelain, bronzes, busts, rare coins, historical portraits, furniture that once belonged to Marie Antoinette and Madame du Barry, and art by the likes of Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Holbein, Bronzino and Durer.

The sale took place over more than 17 days and fetched an astounding £397,562 (about £42 million in today’s money). Meanwhile, Sotheby’s were entrusted to sell off the Beckford and Hamilton Libraries, featuring rare manuscripts and books, which netted an additional £786,847 — bringing the 2026 equivalent total to more than £125 million.

When the family retreated to the more manageable Dungavel House, the Palace fell largely silent.

In 1919, Country Life’s Avary Tipping and staff photographer Alfred E. Henson were invited to photograph what remained before that, too, was auctioned off.

Entire rooms were sold off and transported around the globe, including 11 which were purchased by the American equivalent of the 10th Duke, William Randolph Hearst.

In 1921, Hamilton Palace was demolished, thanks to coal mining subsidence (the sinking or settling of the ground surface caused by the collapse of underground mine workings) — though they were still at it in the early 1930s.

The 10th Duke’s mausoleum still stands, thought there is no one inside. The bodies were unceremoniously carted off in a coal wagon to a nearby graveyard when it was feared that the monument might also sink.

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