John Murray, The Pineapple Dome, Dunmore Park, Stirlingshire, Scotland

Dunmore Park, the ancestral home of the Earls of Dunmore, includes a large country mansion, Dunmore House, and grounds which contain two large walled gardens. These walled gardens, built with high stone or brick walls, sheltered the gardens from wind and frost, with the possibility of creating a microclimate in which the ambient temperature could be raised a few degrees above that of the surrounding landscape.

A building containing a hothouse was built into one of these walls in 1761 by John Murray, the fourth Earl of Dunmore. The hothouse, which is located on the ground floor of this building, was used, among other things to grow pineapples. The hothouse was heated by a furnace system that circulated hot air through cavities in the wall construction of the building.

John Murray left Scotland after the initail building was built to become the last Colonial Governor of Virginia in America. Upon his return to Dunmore, he added the upper-floor pavilion or summerhouse with its pineapple-shaped cupola and the Palladian lower-floor portico to the building’s structure.

The pineapple is around 14 metres (46 ft) high and constitutes a stunning example of the stonemason’s craft, being a remarkably accurate depiction of a pineapple. Each of the curving stone leaves is separately drained to prevent frost damage, and the stiff serrated edges of the lowest and topmost leaves and the plum berry-like fruits are all cunningly graded so that water cannot accumulate anywhere, ensuring that frozen trapped water cannot damage the delicate stonework.