Description

Loch Lomond And Trossachs National Park Planning Authority

1910. Shooting lodge designed by the Glasgow architects Stewart and Paterson for Colonel Archibald Stirling of Keir. The building is characterised by its restrained Scots Renaissance detailing including crowstepped gables and carved and shaped dormerheads to the principal 1st floor windows. The main house is L-shaped with an adjoining lower service and bedroom wing creating an overall U-plan. Wing walls from the house and service block link to a former stable block shielding the rear of the house from view and creating an internal courtyard. Built on an elevated site above the A84 road to take full advantage of the dramatic scenery. The main elevation faces SW giving views across Loch Lubnaig towards Ben Ledi. A driveway leaves the main road passing a rectangular-plan motor house, further along the drive is an L-shaped lodge, and some distance from this is the main house itself.

To the entrance (NW) elevation, a large armorial panel with the Stirling family motto 'Gang forward' is set above the bolection moulded doorpiece. The carved dormerheads to the pair of 1st floor breaking eaves windows are decorated with strapwork to their upper parts and inscribed with the initial A. S. (Archibald Stirling). The adjoining wing wall to the left is punctured by a large round arched gateway with an oversized keystone and voussoirs giving access to the courtyard. The NW gable end of the former stable block is enlivened by a small capped stair turret which sits below the majority of the gable end. The SW (garden) elevation has a large late 20th century conservatory centred at the ground floor with a balcony created to its roof. The central window to the 1st floor has been lengthened and gives access to the balcony. The dormerheads are simpler than those to the NW. The 2-bay service and bedroom wing is set back from the main façade. It extends out to the NE creating a corresponding arm to that of the entrance wing. The wing wall to the SE is lower than that of the NW, a doorway is set to the centre. The stable block is plain to its SE and NE elevations, stone dormerheads employed throughout the building are not featured to the NE, as this elevation is fairly obscured.

Dormerheads are though employed to the elevation of the stable block which faces into the internal courtyard as family and house guests would have been familiar with this part of the building as they mounted and dismounted their horses. The ground floor of the stable block has been reconfigured to offer modern accommodation. The rear elevation of the house which faces into the courtyard is plain and unadorned, both gable ends are crowstepped, that to the service wing is set lower.

Interior

The interior of the house has been designed to a very high standard employing some interesting Wrenaissance detailing. Common features to the majority of the principal ground floor rooms include moulded doorpieces with overdoors, parquet flooring, Jacobean revival cornice work and a series of fine chimneypieces with cast-iron hob grates. The entrance leads into a panelled painted timber vestibule which gives access to the central hall. The hall is painted panelled timber with a number of reeded ionic columns and pilasters, some of which frame the dogleg stair. The former smoking room has polished oak panelling with a bolection marble and lugged timber chimneypiece framed by a pair of ionic pilasters supporting a cornice. A corridor running off the hall gives access to the dining room with further service rooms including the butler's pantry and kitchen set off from this. The butler's pantry retains its original cupboards, which have been recently restored, 2004. The stairwell to the 1st floor is enclosed by an arcade of ionic columns with Jacobean style plasterwork. The hall corridor running to part of the 1st floor has a simple barrel vault. A series of bedrooms and bathrooms run off the hall with simple decoration and coomed ceilings.

Materials

Painted white render with dressed sandstone to openings, margins, base course, eaves cornice, dormerheads, crowsteps and stacks. 4-panelled timber main door with multi-paned letterbox fanlight. Predominantly 12-pane timber sash and case windows. Grey slate pitched roofs. Stacks arranged predominantly to gable apexes, ridge stack to service block, pair of wallhead stacks to stable block. Stacks; rendered with exposed margins to house, ashlar to service/bedroom wing, rendered to stable block. Cast-iron rainwater goods with decorative hoppers.

Lodge

1910. Symmetrical, simple, single storey, L-shaped lodge. A 1763 date stone reputedly taken from a former farm house to the site is placed above the doorway. Bipartite windows flank the door. Timber boarded door with multi-paned fanlight, 12-pane timber sash and case windows to principal windows.

White painted render with exposed sandstone dressings to openings and margins. Pitched grey slate roof with modern ventilators, exposed rafters. Rendered gable apex stacks with cans. Cast-iron rainwater goods.

Motor House/Kennels/Byre

1910. Rectangular-plan multi-purpose building. To the rear the building is missing its doors and windows, and is in some state of deterioration, 2004. 2 large doors to the SW gable give access to a large space which would have been used to garage motor vehicles. The ceiling is timber boarded with a central ventilator joined to the ventilator of the gable apex. To the SE elevation is a kennel with cast iron railings to an enclosure. To the rear of the building is to be found a compartment which housed a former byre/dairy. A stack to the rear possibly indicates that this may have also served as a bothy. Harled walls, sections to the rear have deteriorated. Pitched grey slate roof, coped ashlar skews with scroll skewputts.

Statement of Interest

Major Roy's map indicates that a farming township was situated at Ardchullarie More in the mid 18th century, then called Aldchulery. The 1st edition map shows a building sited where the lodge is built, it was probably pulled down at the time the shooting lodge was built. It is believed that this building was a farmhouse where the early African explorer James Bruce of Kinniard (1730-1794) wrote his account in 1768 of his journey to the source of the Blue Nile. The 1st edition Ordnance Survey appears to show the township had been been deserted by 1863-63.

It is believed by the owner that the house may have been commissioned to celebrate the marriage of Colonel Archibald Stirling of Keir. Colonel Stirling's son, David Stirling, is credited as founding the S.A.S.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q77769675

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Liverpool: Pevsner City Guide (Pevsner Architectural Guides: City Guides)
• 
  Historic Environment Law: Planning, Listed Buildings, Monuments, Conservation Areas and Objects, Supplement 2014
• 
  Nottinghamshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Dorset (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Department for Communities Listed Historic Buildings of Northern Ireland: Information Guide for the 2nd Survey of Historic Buildings
• 
  Kent: West and the Weald: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)