Westbar

Westbar is a gatehouse with accommodation and a water tank, built in 1929 by William Gilmour Wilson as part of the development of Thorpeness village for Glencairn Stuart Ogilvie. The building is constructed of concrete, faced with brick and timber framing, and has plaintile roofs. It is designed in a Medieval military style with a symmetrical composition. The design comprises a six-storey gatehouse tower flanked to the right and left by three-storey dwellings, each with a dormer attic. The tower has a depressed archway at second-floor level, with suspended timber-framed accommodation below, creating a square-headed, coved carriageway underneath. Clasping corner buttresses rise from the base to the parapet. The fenestration is mainly of timber casements with leaded panes to the east side, and metal casements to the west. The upper two stages of the tower draw on ecclesiastical precedents; two pairs of square-headed lancets are present on each face, with two two-light Y-tracery belfry windows above, these elements separated by brick pilaster strips. The structure is finished with a crenellated parapet. To either side of the tower are holiday flats, with brick ground floors and timber-framed upper floors, featuring mullioned timber windows and gabled roofs. One tall studio light is present within flat-topped dormers to each side of the west face. The interior was not inspected, but the upper two storeys of the tower contain a water tank. It is part of a good group and is one of the principal buildings within the resort village. Glencairn Stuart Ogilvie, the owner of the Thorpeness Estate, initially conceived and sketched out the village design, subsequently commissioning the architects involved.