Fasque House

Fasque House, including its court of offices and sundial, is a monumental castle-style country house built between 1809 and 1813, most probably to designs by John Paterson. The centre canted bay was raised and the porte cochère added around 1845 to 1850, possibly by John Henderson. The east wing was altered at first floor level — reduced from five to three bays — to mirror the west wing, and interior alterations were carried out in 1902 including work to the principal first floor room. The house commands an exceptional interior, vaulted cellars, and an adjoining court of offices, all set within the designed landscape of Fasque Estate.

EXTERIOR

The house is almost rectangular in plan and is stepped symmetrically, rising through two storeys and attic, three storeys, and four storeys depending on section. The vertical emphasis of crenellated polygonal towers divides the regularly fenestrated stepped façade, which culminates in a broad canted centre bay rising to four storeys above a crenellated rusticated porte cochère. Walls are built in coursed, squared red and brown sandstone rubble with long and short work quoins, some droved or stugged. There is a base course, moulded string course, eaves cornice, and crenellations throughout. Architectural details include pointed arch tripartite windows, semi-elliptical pend arches with voussoirs, and stone mullions.

The principal south elevation has a deep-set, part-glazed two-leaf panelled timber door set within the four-storey canted bay at centre. Flanking three-storey bays sit under piended roofs with three-stage polygonal towers beyond, and two-storey outer wings with two-storey and attic outer angle towers — the right-hand tower bearing a clock at attic stage and a diminutive cupola. The east elevation has a Gothic tripartite window to the left and a pend entrance to the gabled court of offices to the right. The rear north elevation, overlooking the court of offices, largely reflects the principal elevation and retains an unaltered three-storey canted centre bay.

Windows have 4-, 6-, 8-, and 12-pane glazing patterns in timber sash and case frames, with decorative astragals to the pointed arched windows. Roofs are covered in graded grey slates. Chimney stacks are banded, coped ashlar and brick with cans, some polygonal. Skews are ashlar-coped with gable finials. Cast iron downpipes have decorative rainwater hoppers.

INTERIOR

The interior retains an exceptionally fine and complete decorative scheme. Throughout the house there are high quality Classical and Gothic plasterwork cornices, friezes, and ceilings; architraved and pedimented doorpieces; marble and timber fire surrounds many fitted with cast iron grates; panelled timber doors and dadoes; dado rails; panelled timber shutters and window seats; and early sanitary ware.

The long entrance hall has pedimented doorcases and round-arched recesses, and leads into an elliptical stair hall. Here an imperial stair divides into long cantilevered flights that rise around the wall and meet at the second floor. The domed ceiling above carries elegant Classical plasterwork, while the wall plasterwork is Gothic-detailed, incorporating alternating miniature fan vaulting and acroteria. The stair windows have etched tripartite inner glazing, and the top landing door is framed by clustered colonettes.

The first floor opens into an oval tribune surmounted by a dome with round-arched niches and simple ironwork railings.

The principal first floor room — formerly two rooms — retains original doorcases and a later deep frieze. Its window embrasures are unusual, flanked by tall fluted quarter columns with oval panels in the shutters. The library retains its original bookcases, the detailing of which matches the door architraves. The room to the east has clustered colonettes to a tripartite Gothic window, with a fireplace set beneath the centre window — a detail also found at Lord Burlington's Chiswick House, where the flue runs up one of the flanking piers. The kitchen retains much of its original timberwork.

COURT OF OFFICES

The tall two-storey and attic, multi-gabled east range adjoins the house at the pend arch. Lower link ranges, both gabled and piended, form a flat-sided C-plan to the north and west. The laundry is understood to contain a stove, a pulley-operated ceiling drying rack, and a press operated by an outside waterwheel. The wash-house is understood to contain two coal-fired boilers and original wooden sinks. These areas were not inspected in 2008.

SUNDIAL

A polygonal sundial is sited to the south of the main door, consisting of a circular stone plinth, a moulded pillar (possibly recut), and a gnomon.

HISTORY AND SIGNIFICANCE

Work to replace an earlier house, sited just to the west of the present building, began in 1809. Sir Alexander Ramsay of Balmain, described as a great improver, had previously called in William Adam to remodel the old Fasque House, and an unexecuted plan and elevation are illustrated in Vitruvius Scoticus. Sir Alexander Burnet, second son of Sir Thomas Burnet of Leys, inherited the estate in 1806 but died in 1810 soon after work on the present house had begun. His son, also Sir Alexander, completed the project at a reported cost of £30,000.

A print held at Fasque in 1979 — drawn by J S Paterson, a drawing master from Montrose, and published in 1824 — shows the front elevation before the top storey was added to the centre bay. The estate was sold in 1829 to John Gladstone, founder of his family's fortunes, who was created a baronet in 1846 and dropped the final 's' from the family name of Gladstones. Estate development and alterations to the house continued under Sir John, including the addition of the fourth storey to the centre bay and the porte cochère. These changes are stylistically attributed to John Henderson, who designed St Andrew's Episcopal Church — sited just east of the house — in 1847. In 1851 Sir John was succeeded by his eldest son Sir Thomas. His younger brother William, four times Prime Minister, was a regular visitor to Fasque.

In 1976, after the house had been mothballed for some years, Peter Gladstone and his wife undertook repair and redecoration and opened Fasque House to visitors. Almost nothing had been thrown away throughout the house's history, and it presented an outstandingly complete picture of country estate life. The rare survival of the house and estate is likely due in part to its remaining in the Gladstone family from 1829 until the beginning of the 21st century. At the time of the revised listing description in 2009, the estate was being marketed and the contents had been removed.

ATTRIBUTION

The design of Fasque House is attributed to John Paterson on stylistic grounds. Paterson, the son of an experienced architect and builder, had a successful country house practice in Scotland and the north of England. He had been appointed clerk of works by the Adam Brothers on a number of sites, and after their deaths became, in the words of Margaret Sanderson, a leading exponent of the castle style they had pioneered, assimilating the characteristic principles of the Adam style and becoming the main practitioner of the Adam Castle idiom in the early 19th century, with a flair for designing elegant interiors — particularly oval and circular rooms — reminiscent of his master. These qualities are evident in the elegant staircase at Fasque, which is presumably modelled on Robert Adam's imperial staircase at Home House in London, built around 1775.

Externally, the principal façade of Fasque closely resembles Eglinton Castle in Ayrshire, where Paterson was working in 1797. An unexecuted design for the south front of Eglinton Castle by John Baxter, dated 1775, also displays the characteristic centre bay detail seen at Fasque.

Marcus Binney has noted the use of a typically Aberdonian characteristic at Fasque: the oval panels on the drawing room shutters may, he suggests, indicate the hand of a northern architect, perhaps John Smith. However, Smith's known works do not include Fasque House, and the detail may be the work of an Aberdeen joiner.

The first floor east wing of the principal elevation was altered to achieve overall symmetry. The evidence of blocked windows, which would have admitted more light, together with references to exotic plants growing in the house, has led to the suggestion that there may once have been a first floor conservatory, as at Pitfour in Aberdeenshire.

John Paterson is also thought to have been responsible for the design of the estate's Stable Block, the Apple House and Walled Garden, the South Lodge, and the Octagon, all listed separately. Comparative work can be seen at the separately listed distinctive D-plan Gothic Fetteresso Church in Stonehaven, and at alterations to the 17th century Fetteresso Castle, which included a central castellated tower.

Fasque House is listed as a group with the Stable Block and the Apple House with Walled Garden.