MovieChat Forums > The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) Discussion > What is the name of the house at Cramond...

What is the name of the house at Cramond?

posted 14 years ago by ccoutroulos
4 replies | jump to latest

I mean the house in which Sandy, Jenny and Monica find Miss Brodie's crêpe-de-Chine nightgown. It hardly looks like the sort of house a schoolteacher like Mr. Lowther could afford to live in. (Even if he inherited it, as Miss Mackay says, the upkeep must be pretty expensive.) Looks like a mansion to me.

[–] ccoutroulos 14 years ago

I should have looked at the information given here more closely. It's Barnbougle Castle in Dalmeny, Edinburgh! Rather tries your credulity to think Mr. Lowther could live there, doesn't it!

[–] Trippetta10 14 years ago

I think Mr. Lowther's main source of income was an inheritance. Perhaps he taught for the same reason he directed the choir--he was outgoing and liked to be busy.

[–] EllisFowler 13 years ago

You're correct. It's explained in the novel that he inherited the estate, in which he'd been born and lived all his life, from his mother. He was a shy and modest man of means.

[–] cookiela2001 9 years ago

It hardly looks like the sort of house a schoolteacher like Mr. Lowther could afford to live in. (Even if he inherited it, as Miss Mackay says, the upkeep must be pretty expensive.)

It's a really beautiful and impressive home, but also, houses like that often have a lot of land associated with them, which has been leased out for generations to tenant farmers. So while it is a huge house, it also may self-generate a regular income to support itself.

Despite their apparent grandeur, many of those family homes were quite cold and uncomfortable, without modern heating systems or many bathrooms. I was recently reading about Scotney Castle in Lamberhurst, Kent, which up to the 1940's had several WINGS of rooms, but only one large bathroom (later partitioned into two.)

What I'm saying is, one could still live kind of a frugal, skimpy existence even in a seemingly grand house like that. They were hardly ever redecorated, for instance, and often the heirloom curtains would be in much-mended tatters, if you looked closely.

.