Description

1878, with earlier-20th-century addition to E corner. 2-storey and attic, 3-bay, roughly L-plan, eclectically detailed villa on raised site, with crowstepped gables, chevron detailing above ground-floor openings, parapet with cast-iron railing and finials above 1st-floor windows, central pavilion-roofed tower with brattishing, and single-storey extension with roof terrace in re-entrant angle at E. Tooled yellow sandstone ashlar to principal elevation; tooled, squared, snecked yellow sandstone elsewhere; lightly droved ashlar dressings throughout. Base course; eaves cornice; moulded lintel cornice, frieze and cornice around both sides of E extension. Quoin strips. Quadripartite windows with colonette mullions to bowed right bay; stop-chamfered window margins elsewhere to principal elevation; raised cills to side and rear elevations.

FURTHER DESCRIPTION: Principal (SE) elevation: 2 stone steps to central, 9-panel timber door with rectangular fanlight in roll-moulded, corniced architrave; single light above at 1st floor; projecting corbelled balcony at 2nd floor; bipartite, stone-mullioned window at attic of tower. 2-storey canted windows to slightly recessed, gabled left bay with oculus at attic. 2-storey bowed windows to gabled right bay with oculus at attic. Single-storey extension to outer right with decorative cast-iron railing enclosing terrace at 1st floor. SE (side) elevation: single-storey extension to left with 2 semicircular stone steps to shouldered, round-arched door with fanlight in rectangular architrave with narrow side lights (see NOTES); blank gable advanced to right. Rear (NW) elevation: irregular fenestration, with tall, round-arched stair window to centre and single-storey, gabled service wing advanced to right (see NOTES). Irregular fenestration to crowstepped, platform-gabled SW (side) elevation.

Predominantly plate glass in timber sash-and-case windows; 4-pane glazing to central 1st-floor front window. Grey slate roof with metal ridge. Corniced ashlar stacks with octagonal buff clay cans. Predominantly plastic rainwater goods with some decorative cast-iron hoppers.

INTERIOR: entrance lobby with geometrically patterned ceramic floor tiles and timber wall panelling. Half-glazed, timber-panelled inner door with narrow side lights and tripartite rectangular fanlight.

Statement of Interest

A good, later-19th-century villa with eclectic detailing, situated on an elevated site above West Stewart Place, at the eastern end of Wilton in the north-east of Hawick.

The building's principal elevation successfully combines elements as diverse as Dutch crowstepped gables, a French Renaissance tower and Gothic colonette mullions. The east corner extension is not shown on the 2nd or 3rd Edition Ordnance Survey maps (1897 and 1917 respectively), but had been added by the time of the 1938 revisions to the 3rd Edition Ordnance Survey map. The side door, with its shouldered, round-arched shape and flanking lights, echoes a form common in the architecture of 17th-century East Anglia and repeated in the work of the English architect Richard Norman Shaw in his Arts & Crafts and 'Queen Anne' buildings of the 1870s. The rear service wing, which appears to be original as it is shown on the 2nd Edition Ordnance Survey map, has been significantly altered.

This area of Hawick was formerly known as 'Stewartfield', and this villa was built as 'Viewforth' for hatter George Porteous. Subsequent occupants include I Washington Wallis and John Farrar Blenkhorn. It became a temperance hotel prior to the Second World War, and was latterly a regular hotel until being sold to the current owners in 2007. The interior was not seen at resurvey (2008), however the entrance lobby was visible from the exterior

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q77781140

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

• 
  Lancashire: Manchester and the South-East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Berkshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  [(Bedfordshire, Huntingdon and Peterborough)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1968)
• 
  Hertfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Peterborough (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Kent: West and the Weald: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)