The Hill House, Helensburgh, is one the Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh's most important works, a building in which he achieved one of the main aims of artists at the time: an integration of all the arts. For The Hill House, Mackintosh had the valuable collaboration of his wife, the artist Margaret Macdonald.
The building was commissioned by the editor Walter Blackie, who wanted to build a luxurious holiday villa for his family in a residential area on Scotland's west coast. The project began in 1902 and the house was ready two years later. Blackie was an art lover and his editorial publications had helped to popularise the Glasgow Style, which was Scotland's version of Art Nouveau. The house's exterior presents clear references to local architecture, while the interior areas combine an aesthetic, symbolic conception of space with the practice of domestic comfort.
The National Trust for Scotland has cared for the building since 1982 and has suitably restored it in order to recapture its original character.