At a time of much politicised flag-waving and ersatz heritage it is very sad to see the proposed demolition of the Ayrshire home of Sir William Arrol, one of Scotland’s greatest engineers and designer of the Tay Bridge, Forth Bridge and London’s Tower Bridge. Arrol personified Victorian drive and innovation: born in poverty and apprenticed to a blacksmith he became a world-renowned engineer, served as an MP and, on his death, his home was gifted to the British Red Cross – they don’t make them like that any more.

Surely the demolition of Seafield House would  be a damning indictment of Scottish conservation as well as presenting the nation in a rather superficial light - dislocated from its past and indifferent to the virtues that once combined to create a very particular Scottish greatness.

Some of you will know John Addison who has worked alongside us in an engineering capacity on some of our larger projects. For those of you who don’t, he is a building conservation specialist, one of the co-authors of the Edinburgh New Town Conservation Handbook and holder of refreshingly robust opinions on what is going wrong within many Council departments. He is helping to raise awareness of the campaign for Seafield House’s survival and when we spoke he saw this as just the latest in a line of bureaucratic failures that are representative of wider conservation issues: “The double standards shown by Councils is breathtaking and deeply worrying. They preach ‘best practice’ and government standards to us all, yet they enforce from trivia, bully private businesses, destroy buildings and breach those Codes and Standards which are important to people in daily life. Just look at the mess Edinburgh Council has created with the trams fiasco and the massive abuses of property and human rights associated with its ongoing Property Repairs Scam. I helped the BBC make its TV documentary and was horrified at the evidence of how a once logical maintenance-watch system descended into technical and management chaos. This wilderness must have opened up the road for the corruption reported in the press.”

Find out more about Seafield House at www.heraldscotland.com/mobile/news/home-news/council-to-debate-fate-of-scots-engineers-home.16744756

Photograph of Seafield House courtesy of Hugh Dougherty.

We had an inspiring time at the Cadell exhibition at The National Gallery of Modern Art Two (the rather pointlessly – and no doubt expensively – renamed Dean Gallery).

Kicking off a series on the Scottish Colourists this is, amazingly, the first solo exhibition of the Edinburgh-born Cadell’s work to be held in a public gallery for 70 years. His still lifes and portraits are well covered, as are the beautifully natural paintings of Iona. But we particularly enjoyed the striking interiors that Cadell painted in his Edinburgh studios. Cadell clearly took great care with his surroundings and the familiar Georgian proportions of the rooms are enlivened by his bold use of colour (see The Orange Blind and The Gold Chair). The effect is as arresting now as it must have been at the time. They certainly show Edinburgh in a glamorous light.

The exhibition is on until 18^th March and it is definitely something to make time for.

• See: www.nationalgalleries.org

Wishing you a happy and prosperous 2010, from the Ampersand team.