Scotland's unmissable art and history touchstones — and where to find them

Speaking in tongues

Aberlemno Pictish stones, Angus

Be warned: Pictish stones are strangely addictive. The more you see, the more you want to decode the mysteries of their unique visual language. There are 200 examples in Scotland, including the Dupplin Cross in St Serf’s Church in Dunning and those in the Meigle Sculptured Stones museum, both in Perth and Kinross. Three examples still standing in their original location along Aberlemno’s main road (above) provide us with an understanding of the evolution of Pictish carving. A double sinuous line, evoking a snake (or river) appears at the top of the Serpent Stone, above ornate dividers and a circular mirror. These are carved into the rock, but a later stone on the same road shows similar symbols — now highly decorated — standing proud. Below them, a hunting scene unfolds and, on the other side, a 10ft ring-head cross marks the arrival of Christianity in Pictland. (The stones are covered from October to March to protect them from excessive weathering.)

Checkmate

The Lewis Chessmen, split between the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh and the British Museum, London

Also featured in our London list, the Lewis chess pieces are tiny in stature — no more than 4in tall — but they command your attention. Carved from walrus ivory and sperm-whale tooth, they are richly detailed. Hefty kings and queens sit on their thrones, swords laid across passive laps. By comparison, the warders (rooks) are ready for battle — several bite their shields in anticipation, like ancient berserkers, who notoriously fought naked to intimidate their opponents. There are also clean-shaven bishops with tall croziers and knights in battle armour on stocky horses. By the time these pieces were made in 12th-century Trondheim, Norway, the expansion of Christianity had ensured that the bishop supplanted the earlier war elephant in the game. The chessmen were buried on Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides, when the island was part of the Norwegian empire, and only found in the early 19th century.

For all that is holy

Becket’s reliquary casket, The Burrell Collection, Glasgow

Thomas Becket was a Norman who rose to become Henry II’s chancellor. The King relied on him heavily and rewarded him with the Archbishopric of Canterbury. However, Henry underestimated Becket’s religious zeal and was angered when he resigned as chancellor, confiding in his knights that he wished he could be rid of him. They took matters into their own hands and murdered Becket inside Canterbury Cathedral, Kent, on December 29, 1170. Within three years, Becket had been canonised by the Pope and a cult grew up around his remains. Every church and monastery in England seemed to own a piece of his hair shirt or drops of his spilled blood. These holy relics needed appropriate housing and the French enamel workshops in Limoges were quick to produce narrative caskets showing the knights slicing off Becket’s skull as he prayed.

We are family

Portrait of Elizabeth Murray and Dido Belle, David Martin, Scone Palace, Perth

This double portrait originally hung in Kenwood House, north London, the weekend retreat of William and Elizabeth Murray, Lord and Lady Mansfield. Scone Palace in Perthshire is today home to the Earls of Mansfield and the painting now hangs there, in The Ambassador’s Room. Murray was chief justice of England from 1756. He and Elizabeth had no children of their own, but agreed to raise their two great-nieces, Elizabeth and Dido Belle. The young Elizabeth’s father was ambassador to Austria and Paris; Dido’s father was Admiral Sir John Lindsay, commander-in-chief of the Royal Navy and her mother, Maria, was an enslaved woman from the Caribbean. In this painting by David Martin, dating from about 1776, Elizabeth sits quietly in a pink gown, a book in her lap, and Dido springs up from the bench, eager to be on the move. They both wear pearl chokers, but Dido is dressed in an exotic turban, as if to emphasise her mixed race.

Hark! The herald angels sing

Phoebe Anna Traquair’s murals, Mansfield Traquair Centre, Edinburgh

The Mansfield Traquair Centre was originally the Catholic Apostolic Church, built in Edinburgh in the 1870s by a congregation who believed in the imminent second coming of Christ. Phoebe Anna Traquair won the commission to fill the church with murals and she toiled on them from 1893 to 1901. A long one unfolds along both sides of the nave, telling the story of Christ and featuring scenes from the Old Testament. The West Wall features a choir of redeemed souls heralding Christ’s return, but it is the 62ft-high Chancel Arch that draws you in as you enter. Four giant cherubim, whose muscular wings shimmer in the rainbow light, float above symbols of the gospel saints. Traquair wove together Celtic symbolism with Pre-Raphaelite forms and religious iconography to create an interior that still dazzles.

Power couple

The Hill House, Charles Rennie and Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, Helensburgh, Argyll & Bute

Hill House in Helensburgh is a total work of art. It was designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in 1902–04 for the publisher Walter Blackie. Mackintosh’s austere architecture is complemented by an interior in which no detail has been left to chance, from his ladderback chairs and brass lighting sconces to the gesso paintings by his wife, Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh. Together, they designed the mosaic fireplace surrounds, lampshades, bookshelves and bedsheets embroidered with stylised roses. Even the fire tongs have a sinuous twist. The couple met at the Glasgow School of Art and married in 1900. They were fêted in Vienna, Austria, where Gustav Klimt was a fan, and their Scottish take on Art Nouveau became known as the Glasgow Style.

Life in colour

Works by the Scottish Colourists, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, and Kelvin-grove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow

The artists known as the Scottish Colourists — F. C. B. Cadell, S. J. Peploe, J. D. Fergusson and Leslie Hunter — drew much of their inspiration from the vibrant hues of the South of France and the artistic movements they studied first hand in Paris before the First World War. In the French capital, they followed the lead of Matisse and the Fauves (Wild Beasts), increasingly turning to bright, unadulterated colour to create portraits, still lifes and landscapes. Yet, it’s in Scotland, where they were all born, that many of their works can be seen today, such as Fergusson’s Portrait of Anne Estelle Rice (1908) and Peploe’s 1913 Still Life (both National Gallery of Scotland), Hunter’s Roses in a White and Blue Vase (1908–10) and Cadell’s assured A Lady in Black from 1925 (both at Kelvingrove).

Follow the links for the other instalments in this series, which are based in London, the East of England, Ireland and the North of England.

This feature originally appeared in the December 31, 2025, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.