Woodhead Cottage, Carnousie

Woodhead Cottage is a single-storey, three-bay estate cottar's cottage, principally dating to a late 19th century remodelling of an earlier cottage that was itself built in the early to mid 19th century. The remodelling was possibly carried out to designs by the local architect James Duncan, and is thought to date to around 1890, when John Harvey was improving the Carnousie Estate. The cottage was built to serve the nearby Penelopefield farm, situated just over 400 metres to the north. A cottar was a farm labourer or tenant who occupied a cottage in return for labour.

The building is rendered over what is likely locally sourced stone, with dressings of Turriff sandstone in droved ashlar with narrow margins. Where the render has spalled, tooled red sandstone construction is visible. The openings have stop-chamfered reveals, and the windows are bipartite with timber mullions and timber casement frames. Fragments of the original diamond-pane glazing pattern survive. The gables have decorative timber bargeboards with a trefoil motif and ball finials, and the end gables have a jerkin-headed roof supported on wooden brackets on corbels. The roof is finished with red fish-scale tiles and decorative ridge tiles, and there is a pair of stone chimney stacks with a cope on the ridge; the northern stack has an octagonal clay can.

The principal elevation faces east. It has a central entrance set within an advanced gabled bay, flanked on each side by bipartite windows with small gables above that break the roofline at the eaves. The entrance door is vertically boarded timber — though some boards are missing — and features decorative cast iron hinges and a rectangular fanlight.

Later additions include lean-tos with corrugated roofs adjoining the south gable and the west (rear) elevation.

The interior was inspected in 2018. It comprises three rooms, each with vertical timber boarding to the walls. The rooms at each end of the building have fireplaces with plain timber mantlepieces. The doors throughout are four-panelled timber. The building has been unoccupied for many years and the fabric is in a state of disrepair, though a significant amount of the late 19th century interior detailing survives.

Architecturally, Woodhead Cottage is a notable example of Arts and Crafts style design applied to a cottar's cottage, which is unusual for this building type. It shares very close design details — including the bracketed eaves, decorative timber bargeboards, and fish-scale tiled roof — with the nearby Red Lodge, the gatelodge to the west entrance of Carnousie House, which is documented as a design by James Duncan (1828–1907). Duncan was the son of a Turriff mason, commenced practice in Turriff by at least 1862, and built a substantial reputation for designing farm steadings, with more than forty local estates as clients. There is currently no documentary evidence directly linking Duncan to Woodhead Cottage, but the stylistic similarities suggest he was either involved or that his design details were closely copied.

Woodhead Cottage is part of a group of Carnousie Estate ancillary buildings that were built or remodelled in the late 19th century under John Harvey's programme of improvements. The Waterside Cottages (both listed) are similarly mid 19th century estate buildings remodelled in the late 19th century with decorative timber bargeboards. Together, these buildings demonstrate the architectural ambitions of the Harvey family's stewardship of the estate.

The origins of Carnousie Estate can be traced to the 14th century, when Alexander Burnard (Burnett) was granted the lands of Carnousie in Banffshire by Royal Charter. The Old House of Carnousie, a Z-plan castellated tower house built by the Ogilvies and dated 1577, later became the farmhouse for Carnousie Mains. In the late 1830s, Captain Alexander Grant, a successful sea merchant who had purchased the estate, commissioned the Aberdeen architect Archibald Simpson to design a new Italianate mansion house. Its south elevation was dominated by a semi-circular balcony supported on Doric columns. Grant fell into financial difficulty and committed suicide in 1841. When the estate was advertised for sale in 1842 it was described as covering 2,967 acres, of which 2,000 were arable, with the new mansion house and a number of estate farms. Grant's house was left unfinished and was demolished around 1930; some of its fabric is thought to have been reused at Elphinstone Hall, and the footprint of the house survives as buried remains.

Around 1844 the estate was bought by William James Harvey. Harvey made extensive improvements to the estate from the mid 19th century onwards, including converting small crofts into estate farms, felling plantation trees to bring the soil into arable use, and repairing or rebuilding farm buildings, as described in the Banffshire Journal and General Advertiser of 14 September 1852. Penelopefield Farm is mentioned in that article as let to a Mr Morison, with improvements including the clearing, trenching and reclaiming of 22 acres of woodland, and a new dwelling house under construction by the tenant. Woodhead Cottage is not specifically mentioned, and its original build date is unknown; it may have been built as part of the 1840s improvements, or it may be earlier. A property called Woodhead, Forglen is recorded in the 1841 census as occupied by John Smith and his family. The 1st Edition Ordnance Survey map (surveyed 1867) shows Woodhead Cottage with an L-plan footprint including an outshot on the east elevation.

Harvey died in 1867 and the estate passed to his eldest son, John. Around 1890 John Harvey extended Carnousie House and commissioned James Duncan to design the Red Lodge gatelodge. The 2nd Edition Ordnance Survey map (surveyed 1900) shows a different footprint for Woodhead Cottage from that on the 1st Edition: the outshot on the east elevation had been removed and an outshot on the west (rear) elevation added. This, combined with the architectural similarities to the Red Lodge, strongly suggests the cottage was remodelled as part of John Harvey's estate improvements around 1890.

It is likely that some fabric from the earlier cottage is incorporated into the present building, though the extent of this is unknown. The overall design and form of the building largely dates to the late 19th century remodelling.

Carnousie Estate was recorded as being particularly abundant in freestone lying just beneath the soil, which was used in the estate buildings and boundary walls. The estate also had woodland plantations of red larch noted as being of suitable quality for shipbuilding and roofing. The stone and timber used in Woodhead Cottage are therefore likely to be locally sourced.

The cottage sits on rising ground and commands a picturesque and prominent view over the River Deveron valley from its principal east elevation; the Deveron forms the southern boundary of the estate. With the exception of a 20th century house built just to the north, the 19th century agricultural setting of the cottage is largely unchanged. Woodhead Cottage is intervisible with the Red Lodge and the Waterside Cottages, and together this group of listed ancillary estate buildings demonstrates the late 19th century improvements and architectural embellishments at Carnousie carried out by John Harvey.