Pittodrie House, Chapel of Garioch

Pittodrie House is a complex country estate house that began as a late 15th-century tower house and has grown substantially through multiple campaigns of building and alteration. The house sits at the centre of a predominantly 19th-century rural country estate.

The original structure dates to the 15th century and takes the form of a three-storey stepped L-plan with jambs not at right angles. A wheel stair, dated to around 1490, sits in the southeast re-entrant angle, with a circular tower adjoining to the northeast. The earlier tower house underwent extensive alteration in 1675, when the northwest re-entrant angle was infilled and a three-storey wing with a square pyramid-roofed tower was added to the northwest.

In 1841, a large neo-Jacobean three-storey addition was built to the east to designs by Archibald Simpson. The east elevation, which serves as the main entrance front, features a three-storey balustraded entrance tower. At the base sits a single-storey square-plan porch with a 1605 armorial panel in the parapet, originally from Balhalgardy. The tower has three windows at first and second floor levels with stepped hoodmoulds. To the left of the entrance tower stands a two-storey section with a full-height canted bay at the centre. The south elevation comprises a circular ogee-capped tower on the southwest corner, a two-bay section with tall round-arched windows at ground floor level, and a gabled bay to the far right with a 1926 canted bay window addition.

Two further additions were made to the early part of the house. A two-storey wing adjoining the west elevation was built around 1860 with gabled windows breaking the wallhead. A crowstepped billiard room, built between 1900 and 1903, adjoins the north side.

Most of the building is harled, with some walls in exposed rubble granite. The roofs are shallow pitched with grey slates. Chimney stacks are predominantly positioned at gableheads and are built in stone with circular cans. Glazing throughout varies in pattern but is predominantly in timber sash and case frames. The tall round-arched windows in the south elevation and those in the adjoining round tower are fitted with lying pane glazing.

The interior, examined in 2017, retains a high degree of surviving fabric in the earliest parts of the house dating to the 17th century and possibly the 15th century. The later additions contain fixtures and fittings of high quality appropriate to a house of this scale. Some ground floor walls of the early 17th-century part are exposed and contain waterchutes. The drawing room in the ground floor southwest corner has a simple ceiling cornice and a marble and decoratively carved timber fire surround. The adjacent old dining room retains a moulded timber mantelpiece, an iron grate with decorative panelled timber doors, panelled timber window shutters, and a ceiling cornice with foliage motif. The former billiard room has timber panelling to dado height with an integral timber overmantel on the west wall above a marble and granite fire surround. The ceiling contains a 36-pane light at its centre.

The straight stone main stair dates to the 1840s and carries a metal balustrade with decorative foliage motif. The same balustrade design appears on the curved stair between first and second floor levels. Some first floor bedrooms in the 1841 addition have marble fireplaces, including one with a plaster surround featuring figurative reliefs and egg and dart cornicing.

The following structures are excluded from the listing: the 1980s three-storey addition to the west, orangery infill to the south, well, sawmill and sawmill cottage, laundry cottages, gardener's cottage, and kennels cottage and kennels.