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Town house built in 1545, subsequently extended before being acquired by George Skene in 1669. It is also known as Cumberland House, and for a time in the 19th century as Victoria Lodging House. It is claimed that this is the only surviving 16th century house left in Aberdeen, a claim largely based on the fact that the sasines (documents which formally convey ownership of land from one person to another) for the plot of land upon which the house sits date back to 1545. The earliest sasine is dated 18 June 1545, when an instrument of sasine was given to Alexander Knollis . The house was situated on the street known as Guestrow, which had been developed in the early 15th century and was thus a comparatively young street at the time. The land remained in the possession of the Knollis family until 1598 when it passed into the hands of the Bisset family. From the Knollis family the house and land passed to Peter Blackburn, then bishop of Aberdeen in 1610. After Blackburn ownership passed to Duncan Wilson and from him to Matthew Lumsden, in 1622. On a dormer window in the roof of the west wing there are the arms of Mathew Lumsden, along with his initials and those of his wife Elisabeth Aberdour. Clearly all of those owners would have had buildings on the toft or burgage plot. This would probably have comprised a main house, probably with a garden and a number of ancillary buildings. Lumsden clearly lived in large parts of what remains today. The house features a painted gallery which is adorned with religious scenes. Specifically the scenes show stages in the life of Christ from the annunciation through to the resurrection. This is probably one of the most important, surviving, cycles of religious painting in the North East of Scotland. The painted panels feature the initials and armorial bearings of Mathew Lumsden and from this we can suppose that it was executed under his ownership of the house. It has been argued that the cycle is indicative of a Catholic owner however Lumsden is known as a covenanter, in other words a Protestant. adornment. After the Lumsdens the land and buildings passed into the hands of the Skene family on 3 July 1665. Sir George Skene, merchant and later, Provost of Aberdeen, took possession of the building 9 April 1669. Skene himself was born in 1619, his mother and father died when he was young and his elder brother David took him to Poland where he was apprenticed to George Aedie, an Aberdonian merchant in Danzick. It was there that he made his money and returned to Aberdeen, in 1665, where he bought the lands of Wester Fintray and Rubislaw. He was Provost for 9 years between 1676-1678. He was knighted in 1681 after being part of Aberdeen's delegation to James, Duke of York. George never married and so his lands and houses passed to his nephews. Above the doorway of the house is a finely decorated carved panel. This incorporates the arms of Skene himself. The arms are flanked on either side by the initials G and S. The arms are composed of three skeins, or dirks, each having a wolf's head on their points. The arms are derived from an (almost certainly mythical) incident in Skene's life in which it is said that he killed a wolf which was threatening the life of then King in the Stocket forest. The arms also comprise his motto: 'Gratis a Deo Data'. After the Skene family the house passed into the hands of the Aedie family. Through the 18th century the house had many different owners. It was during this period when the property was split into two that it became a lodging house. The house's declining history at this point mirrors that of the area. Once the richer classes moved out of the area the houses and land was so subdivided that it led almost directly to overcrowding in the Guestrow area as a whole. The street acquired a bad reputation through the 19th and into the early 20th centuries. This led to call for the area to be demolished as part of the move towards slum clearance from the last quarter of the 19th century. All that remains of Guestrow now is Provost Skene's House; indeed it is the only house to bear that name as an address. In 1910 Robert Anderson gave an interesting description of the house when it was at its nadir. He wrote: 'The interior of the house is perhaps more interesting than the exterior. Many of the rooms are lined with panelling-in one of them the panels are of thick oak; and several of the ceilings are richly decorated with plaster designs in relief, the Skene coat of arms forming the centre piece in one instance. A fire place in one room is of mahogany, with beautiful fluted Corinthian pillars and richly carved capitals and frieze. There is a substantial ornamental balustrade at the top of the one of the staircases.' Provost Skene's House was threatened with demolition in 1940, but a long-running campaign saved it. Restoration began in 1951 and it was opened as a museum in 1953. Today the museum features a number of different period rooms and has areas for displays of applied art and local history and archaeology. The exterior of the houses features a comparatively rare two faced sun dial which has been suggested to date to the 17th century. A watching brief was carried out by Aberdeen City Council Archaeological unit in November 1990 during removal of a section of floor in the fireplace of the old kitchen for repair of central heating pipes. One of the stones removed from the floor was inscribed with initials ?T.4HB, ?T.HHR. See NJ90NW1274 for excavation/watching briefs adjacent to Provost Skene's House in advance of Marishcal Square development.
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Historic Environment Records (HER) 
Aberdeen City
HER -
NJ90NW0014 - PROVOST SKENE'S HOUSE, BROAD STREET, ABERDEEN