Putting a Roof on Linlithgow Palace

12 Jan 2020 at 21:07 // under

We spent this afternoon exploring Linlithgow Palace, a large ruin that is frequently mistaken for a castle. Only the stone structure remains, all the wooden floors and roofs were destroyed by fire hundreds of years ago.

Occasionally a plan is mooted about restoring the roof, allowing the main hall to be used for events (in all weathers) as well as letting people see what it would have looked like back then. This would obviously be quite expensive, but it would also ruin the place as a ruined palace. There are many palaces around, but not that many ruined ones that let you walk around them, without lots of velvet ropes keeping you back.

I don't really have a strong opinion about whether the roof should be restored.

One thing that I think that could be fun would be a set of augmented reality glasses that could let you walk around the halls or the courtyard and see what it would have looked like. You could show just the architecture, the missing floors and roofs, or you could dial up the experience and include showing furnishings and decorations. Finally you could also include full reenactment scenes of the palace inhabitants going about their daily lives.

We must be at the stage that this sort of thing is both possible and actually practical to implement. I wonder which historic attractions will be the first to try and implement it.

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