Durn House, Portsoy

Durn House in Portsoy is a classical house built in the later 18th century, featuring two storeys over a raised basement and a five-bay façade. The house has an ashlar front and a rear bowed bay, with polished ashlar dressings and pinned rubble on other sides. The central three bays are slightly advanced and topped with a pediment, fronted by a later single-storey projecting porch with a pediment, accessible via a shallow splayed flight of steps. The first floor has three closely set windows, and there is a blank square recess in the tympanum. The wide outer bays contain a Venetian window on the raised ground floor, and there is a deep band course separating the raised ground and first floors. The pinned rubble flanks include a raised basement entrance on the west and a later ground floor entrance on the east that leads directly into the stairwell. At the rear, the projecting bowed bay is faced with tooled granite ashlar and sandstone ashlar on the raised ground and first floors, while the rest of the rear elevation is made of pinned rubble. The house features 12-pane glazing and a piended platform slate roof with a substantial pair of ashlar-faced corniced stacks, along with a later single rear gable dormer.

Inside, there is a reset 1605 datestone in the stairwall by the doorway. The entrance porch opens into a large hall that has a central plaster ceiling rose with a delicate foliated and flower design, although no other notable plasterwork remains in the house. The staircase to the right (east) features decorative cast-iron balusters leading to the first-floor landing, while plain stick balusters are used for the attic. The doors are raised and fielded panelled. Some chimneypieces are in a contemporary style, but all appear to be later replacements. The parlour has a decorative cast-iron basket grate, and the drawing room features a carved wooden chimneypiece.

The property also includes a pair of simple mid-19th century square gatepiers topped with shaped pyramidal caps, along with a pair of spearhead cast-iron gates.