Description

Basil Spence. 1937. Shotting lodge on country-house scale. 17th/early 18th century traditional Scots domestic idiom.

Splayed and staggered U-plan around a circular walled and cobbled forecourt. Largely symmetrical openings, with occasional asymmetrical miniature stair windows, bipartites, and double windows. Sash and case multi-pane glazing throughout. White-harled with exposed cream ashlar base dressings and margins (brick construction beneath harl); grey slate roofs. Some stacks look reduced in height. Scroll-moulded skewputts to principal gables. Steep-pitched piended and gabled roofs. 2-storey symmetrical N and S elevations with taller 3-bay entrance block at centre.

North Elevation: (the forecourt) has a centre wallhead pediment with oculus. Open-pedimented 17th century style stone doorpiece with thistle finial, datestone and mock marriage lintel (see note).

Garden (S) Elevation: compact symmetrical arrangement about central block with pair flanking and projecting gabled bays. Windows wider on S front allowing for extra light to principal rooms. Gabled L-plan E elevation has seocndary door (to gunroom). Service quarters in W wing including full-height bowed bay. Unaltered single-storey garage block extending W, linked to house by depressed-arched pend. Garage has 2 wide W-facing vehicle bays with boarded and glazed sliding doors; scroll skewputts; slate roof. Bipartite on R of garage block at boiler house/laundry.

Interior: circulation on both floors at front of house: circular entrance hall and passages on N, allowing all principal rooms to be S-facing. Simple stripped pine for staircase balustrade, panelled doors, thick window astragals. Oak flooring. Unadorned white walls. Variety of chimney-piece styles: 17th/early 18th century revival bolection-moulded stone for principal rooms, ground floor; bedrooms alternately with polychrome brick with personalized devices for children's rooms. Multitude of double and single-leaf doors. Heavy boarded and hinged doors in attic.

Garage block not answered at front on E, where a ball-finialed pier terminates the harled enclosing walls of the forecourt (walls: ashlar base, harled, coped; flat caps to circular squat harled piers). Low rubble-built garden wall enclosing square terrace to N, with widely-spaced balusters adjacent to house. Flower garden and tennis court E of house. Timber-louvred game-larder and (?privvy/petrol pump) N of garage block.

Statement of Interest

Built as a hunting-lodge for Alexander Galloway Erskine-Hill (AGH) and Christian Hendry Colville (CHC) (information: Lady Erskine Hill, 1990). Style said to be in conscious imitation of nearby CULTER House (early 18th century). Unsigned design drawings by Spence copied by NMRS, 1990. Slightly different detailing to design as executed.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q17852918

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

• 
  London 4: North: North v. 4 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  London 6: Westminster (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England): Westminster v. 6
• 
  Old House Eco Handbook: A Practical Guide to Retrofitting for Energy-Efficiency & Sustainability
• 
  This Old House: Restoring, Rehabilitating, and Renovating an Older House
• 
  Somerset: South and West (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Gwent/Monmouthshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Wales)