Sir Lawrence Dundas, 1st Baronet

"See also Lawrence Dundas (disambiguation)"

Sir Lawrence Dundas, 1st Baronet (c. 1710 – 21 September 1781), was a Scottish businessman, landowner and politician.

He made his first fortune by supplying goods to the British Army during their campaigns against the Jacobites and in Flanders during the Seven Years' War, 1756-1763. He subsequently branched out into banking, property (he developed Grangemouth in 1777) and was a major backer of the Forth and Clyde Canal which happened to run through his estate at Kerse near Falkirk. James Boswell accounted him "a cunning shrewd man of the world"; he left his son an inheritance worth £900,000. Sir Lawrence was also a man of taste, elected a member of the Society of Dilettanti in 1750.

He bought the Aske Estate, near Richmond in North Yorkshire in 1763 from Lord Holderness for £45,000 and proceeded to enlarge and remodel it in Palladian taste by the premier Yorkshire architect, John Carr, who also designed new stables. His house in Edinburgh, designed by Sir William Chambers became the Royal Bank of Scotland in 1825 (Gilbert, p. 154). He purchased Leoni's grand house near London, Moor Park, for which he ordered a set of Gobelins tapestry hangings with medallions by François Boucher and a long suite of seat furniture to match, for which Robert Adam provided designs: they are among the earliest English neoclassical furniture. [Some of the seat furniture is at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.] Other new furnishings, for Aske and for Sir Lawrence's magnificently appointed London house at 19 Arlington Street were supplied by Thomas Chippendale (1763-66), and Chippendale's rivals, the royal cabinet-makers Vile and Cobb and Samuel Norman (Gilbert); a pair of marquetry commodes in the French taste by a French cabinet-maker working in London, Pierre Langlois, is at Aske. [One is illustrated in Anthony Coleridge, "Chippendale Furniture" 1964, pl. 51.] Capability Brown worked on the park at Aske and provided a design for a bridge (Colvin). In the 1770s, Sir Lawrence turned to Robert Adam for further remodelling and designs for furnishings.

The Aske estate included the pocket borough of Richmond, so Sir Lawrence was therefore able to appoint the member of Parliament.

Sir Lawrence married Margaret Bruce and they had one son, Thomas Dundas. Sir Lawrence died in 1780 and is buried in the Dundas Mausoleum at Falkirk Old Parish Church where his wife and son eventually joined him.

Notes

References

*Howard Colvin, "A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600-1840," 3rd edition 1995.
*Christopher Gilbert, "The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale" 1978. vol I, pp 154-60.
* [http://www.leighrayment.com/Baronetage.htm Leigh Rayment' s baronetage page]