Dunottar School ( High Trees)

Dunottar School (known as High Trees)

A house converted to a school, built in 1867 with additions made around 1908. Later 20th-century alterations are of no special architectural interest. The building is constructed in ashlar with a Welsh slate roof.

The main architectural interest lies in the principal two-storey block, which has single-storey and two-storey side wings. A former stable and garage block with a tower stands to the north-east, built around 1908. The design is in the Italianate style.

The north front (entrance front) presents the main block with seven bays. The central three bays are recessed, with side wings set back behind them—the right wing is single-storey, the left wing is two storeys. The composition has a plinth, rusticated ground floor with a guilloche band above, first-floor rusticated quoins, and a dentilled and modillioned eaves cornice. The ground floor has sash windows; the first floor has 20th-century wooden cross casements. A central tetrastyle portico features columns with frosted rustication to their bases, supporting a full classical entablature with a balustrade above. Within the portico, a glazed double door with a fanlight sits in a keyed round-arched architrave, flanked by pilasters and narrow windows. First-floor windows have raised panels below the jambs of their architraves and corbelled cornices. The right wing has a balustraded parapet. The left wing of three bays displays a tripartite window at its left end on each storey. The roof over the main block is hipped at the outer bays and carries lateral stacks; the left wing has 20th-century roofing material.

The south front (garden front) follows the same style as the north front, with a dentilled cornice above the ground floor. The central three bays are recessed with steps leading up to a triple round-arched arcade supported by Corinthian attached column-and-pilaster piers, with hoodmoulds and fretwork-decorated spandrels. A central glazed door is flanked by windows, with three windows above (as on the north front). Each outer bay has a square ground-floor bay window with a three-light front window featuring banded Corinthian-column mullions, a dentil cornice, a balustrade to the balcony above, and a triple first-floor window. The single-storey side wings have dentil cornices and balustrated parapets. The left wing features a door on the right and a triple window, both with columns as before. The right wing is of brick with doors and windows set in dentilled recesses, an ashlar parapet, and a balustrade. To the rear on the right is a later tower with a clock face in its upper stage, set back, with a corbelled cornice (formerly supporting a cupola).

The returns continue the style with a central triple window to the west return and a bay window at the north end of the east return.

The interior retains many high-quality original features. These include fine parquet floors in the top-lit front hall, ball-room, and stair hall, and a Minton tile floor in the vestibule. Enriched panelling, cornices, and plaster ceilings survive throughout, particularly in the front hall, ball-room, and the room adjoining the billiard room. Original six-panel doors are set in elaborately moulded architraves. Fine fireplaces throughout feature cast-iron grates and richly-moulded architraves, with elaborate ironwork to the gallery in the front hall and to the balustrade of the staircase.

This is a fine and well-preserved example of Italianate domestic architecture from its period.