Troon, Southwood Road, Auchenkyle House, Troon, South Ayrshire

Description

Alexander David Hislop and John Campbell, 1905-7. Large, 2-storey and attic, L-plan, Queen Anne style house with tall, distinctive shouldered chimney stacks, set within private grounds. The house is red brick with brick quoins and has steeply sloping, bell-cast slate roofs and a deep modillioned cornice. There are segmental-arched windows to the ground floor. The advanced entrance bay to the north has a ball-finialled stone doorpiece with a segmental-arch canopy. The garden elevation to the south west has one advanced canted bay and one advanced piended roofed bay. There are small, piended-roof dormers and two later conservatory additions.

The interior was seen in 2014. The house has a fine, high quality decorative scheme with timber panelling to the entrance hall, open-well staircase and corridors. The staircase has wine glass balusters and carved handrail. There is some fine decorative plasterwork, particularly to the shallow-vaulted corridor to the ground floor and to some of the public rooms. The plasterwork has fruit and flower motifs. There are decorative, carved timber fire surrounds to some of the rooms.

The windows are predominantly plate-glass timber sash and case, with a pair of cross-pane lead light windows to the stairwell and a small, circular window on the north elevation. The slates are grey.

Lodge on Southwood Road: Alexander David Hislop, 1905-7. Single-story and attic 3-bay, square-plan, symmetrical Queen Anne style lodge with steeply sloping bell-cast roofs, a central chimney stack and flat-roofed dormers. The lodge is built of red brick with a stone base course and with deep, overhanging eaves. There are raised cills to the segmental-arched windows. Later, piend-roofed extension to rear.

The windows are mostly 6-over 9-pane timber sash and case to the ground with smaller sash and case windows to the attic storey.

The interior was seen in 2014 and the original room layout is largely unaltered, comprising several smaller rooms and a straight stair to the upper floor.

Statement of Interest

Auchenkyle was built in 1905-7 by the Glasgow architects Alexander David Hislop and John Campbell. The house is a substantial, remarkably intact red brick Queen Anne style house with a high quality surviving decorative interior scheme and a stylistically similar lodge. The house has several distinctive design features, including an unusual door piece, prominent, deep eaves and an unusual bell-cast roof. The interior of the property has many interesting features with extensive timberwork and some good plasterwork. The lodge is situated on the main road at the entrance to the property and enhances the streetscape. The two buildings form an important cohesive unit with the lodge retaining its original function. Rob Close and Anne Riches, in Ayrshire And Arran, The Buildings of Scotland note that although the house was originally commissioned by a George Clark who was a shoemaker from Kilmarnock, it was actually completed for James Anderson, a manufacturer. The house was owned through much of the 20th century by the Fraser family. William Fraser Snr was Founder and Governing Chairman of Scottish Cables Ltd, Deanside, Renfrew. The early-20th century saw a number of substantial houses being built in various country and seaside areas by wealthy families, keen to have homes in the country. This area of Troon was owned by the Duke of Portland and he laid out plots between 1890 and 1914 for a number large, self-contained houses with lodges. These were popular as second homes for merchants from Glasgow and other large towns, keen to have a home close to the sea and to the golf courses. These houses were built using a variety of styles and the architects often took inspiration from a number of different sources. Auchenkyle is no exception to this and demonstrates a predominantly Queen Anne style in its design. This style is associated mainly with English architecture of the latter part of the 19th century, rather than Scottish. The Queen Anne style became popular in the latter part of the 19th century and was made more influential by architects such as Richard Norman Shaw. The style is a mixture of Gothic Revival with more domestic influences and was widely adapted for suburban houses in England. Features of the style include the asymmetry, the tall prominent chimneys, segmental-arched windows, steep roofs and deep eaves. Auchenkyle is uncommon in Scottish architectural terms as it demonstrates a distinctly English country house idiom. Alexander David Hislop (1876-1966) was a Glasgow based architect who was taken into partnership with John A Campbell in 1908, as Campbell's health was failing. His work was mainly focussed around Glasgow and the west of Scotland and included private houses as well as industrial buildings. There is a drawing of the house in a private collection with the names of both Hislop and Campbell. As the partnership was not formed until 1908 and the house dates to before this, it is likely that this is a reproduction of a drawing exhibited in 1911 at the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts.

Edited 2018.

External Links

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