Cottown Clay House - 1850

Earth houses have a long history in the British Isles. Today many people still admire the picturesque mudwall or ‘cob’ cottages of Devon and Somerset. However, earth was also a popular building material in parts of Scotland, with mudwall dwellings once being common in Dumfriesshire, Angus, and the Carse of Gowrie (beside the River Tay). In the Carse of Gowrie local clays were used for building from pre-historic times through to the nineteenth century. Today about forty clay buildings survive in the Carse of Gowrie. The former school house at Cottown is a particularly fine example of the type of clay building that was once common in the Carse. The Cottown School House was begun in the mid-eighteenth century. However, like many vernacular buildings its form evolved over time. The University of St Andrews’ Open Virtual Worlds team and Smart History collaborated with the Tay Landscape Partnership and Perth and Kinross Heritage Trust on a representation of the buildings at Cottown as they may have appeared in the nineteenth century. The Cottown School House is now cared for by the National Trust for Scotland.

Sarah Kennedy, Iain Oliver, Alan Miller

David Strachan (Perth and Kinross Heritage Trust), Bess Rhodes (University of St Andrews)

The reconstruction was informed by knowledge from excavations and renovation work undertaken at Cottown during the 1990s.

A digital landscape was created using survey data and height map. Models were created in 3D modelling programs and imported into UNREAL (a cross-platform game engine for creating virtual worlds). The models were then scaled, orientated and assembled. The landscapes were populated with flora and fauna. Where applicable, models of characters and animals were imported and animated.