Description

John Murray Robertson, 1885 or 1895 (see NOTES); billiards room addition 1900. 2-storey, L-plan villa incorporating earlier L-plan farmhouse, made T-plan by billiards room addition. Harled, painted ashlar dressings, piended slate roof, panelled brick ridge stacks with oversailing coping. Thinly architraved windows, sash and case frames, plate glass to bottom, large diamond-pane to top at ground floor (most ground floor windows replaced with out-of character uPVC frames and plate glass), multi-pane to top at 1st floor; canted and projecting windows at S elevation slate-hung between floors, with semi-piended or facetted roofs. Bracketted eaves, boarded soffits, slender finials.

W ELEVATION: entrance tower to right re-entrant, door at chamfered angle, plasterwork panels above depicting flowers and rising sun, swept to square at wallhead, 2 windows at ground and 1st floor, ogival roof with weathervane finial; blank bay recessed to right; stair tower to left with stepped tripartite window and pyramidal roof, ground floor masked by single storey, pentice-roofed bay with 3 windows; gable advanced to left, door and bipartite window at ground floor masked by coped semi-circular curtain wall, decorative panel above window advanced to support projecting window with swept roof at 1st floor.

S ELEVATION: gable advanced to centre, canted window to ground and 1st floor, entrance tower to left re-entrant as above, window to right return, projecting window to ground and 1st floor at right re-entrant; recessed bays to right (addition of 1900) window at ground floor left, bipartite with cat-slide roof at 1st floor, canted window to ground and 1st floor right.

E GABLE: outshot stack at centre, window to left and right (original glazing), window at 1st floor right breaking through eaves with semi- piended roof.

N ELEVATION: long asymmetrical elevation, blank gable slightly advanced to left, addition at re-entrant, later forestairs to centre, bipartite to right with decorative panel at corbelling to projecting window at 1st floor, further bipartite and single window above at far right.

INTERIOR: mosaic floor in entrance porch; panelled central hall (staircase leading off now enclosed), simple pierced timber balusters; chimneypieces removed; some walls removed.

TERRACE WALL: balustraded terrace wall to S.

Statement of Interest

The Croft was embellished and extended for Robert B Ritchie. Although the weathervane finial bears the date 1885, the perspective is dated 1895. The earlier date either refers to the year in which Ritchie acquired the property or when it was altered; if the latter is the case, the perspective was completed a decade later. Despite two small additions at the north elevation, the loss of most of the original glazing at the ground floor, and various internal alterations, the vigour of Murray Robertson?s design remains with some loss of character. The lodge and coach house/stable have been extensively altered and incorporated into one house (in separate ownership) and is not listed.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q17846853

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

• 
  Dorset (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  London 6: Westminster (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England): Westminster v. 6
• 
  Worcestershire Revised Edition (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Somerset: South and West (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Old House Care and Repair
• 
  Lancashire: Liverpool and the South-West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)