Heugh Hotel, Westfield Road, Stonehaven

Heugh Hotel, Westfield Road, Stonehaven

This is a large 2-storey villa with attic, designed by James Augustus Souttar in 1898, with additions extending from the later 19th century to the late 20th century. The building exemplifies Victorian Baronial architecture, featuring a commanding 4-stage conical-roofed round tower, a 3-stage entrance tower with rounded angles corbelled to square at attic level, a castellated port-cochere, ball-finialled crowstepped gables, and conical bartizans. The principal facades are faced in bull-faced Kemnay granite with stugged ashlar, whilst the turrets are dressed granite ashlar. The sides and rear are constructed in red sandstone. A deep base course and moulded string courses, with stugged and droved margins, emphasise the masonry. The windows feature stone transoms and mullions with chamfered arrises and raked cills, including a distinctive V-plan corbelled oriel window.

The principal east elevation (facing Slug Road) is the most architecturally elaborate. An entrance tower sits to the left of centre, with a projecting port-cochere at first-stage level incorporating a moulded doorpiece with an 8-panelled 2-leaf studded timber door, a cornice and multi-pane leaded fanlight, and flanking lights that clasp the rounded angles of the tower. The second stage contains a single window, and the third stage a 2-light V-plan oriel window set within a crowstepped gable. A re-entrant angle to the right contains an engaged round tower with narrow lights at each stage. The remaining bays have bipartite ground-floor windows with single windows to the first floor breaking the eaves into stone-pedimented windowheads. A 2-stage circular angle turret projects at the outer right. A broad crowstepped gable to the outer left displays a tripartite window at ground level, a large bipartite window at first floor, an arrowslit in the gablehead, and a single-stage corbelled angle turret at first-floor level beyond.

The south elevation (facing Westfield Road) comprises three bays with a slightly advanced gabled bay at the centre containing a crenellated canted window at ground level, a bipartite window at first floor, and a glazed arrowslit in the gablehead. The remaining bays have regular fenestration. A flat-roofed single-storey extension projects at the left.

The west elevation is a gabled elevation with a large flat-roofed single-storey extension. The north elevation, also altered, incorporates a gabled bay at the left and a single-storey modern extension at the right beneath a pair of catslide dormers.

Much of the fenestration comprises out-of-character late 20th century replacements, although some original decorative multi-pane leaded glazing survives in mullioned casement windows, now partially obscured by later extensions. The roof is covered in Tiberthwaite green slates with fishscale patterning to the turrets. Decorative cast-iron trefoiled brattishing adorns the eaves. Ridge and gablehead stacks are coped ashlar with square cans. Gablehead skews are ashlar-coped with beak skewputts. Cast-iron downpipes with decorative gargoyle rainwater hoppers complete the external detailing.

The interior contains a fine decorative scheme with finishings in American poplar, moulded plasterwork cornices, panelled shutters, and horizontally-panelled timber doors. Windows feature fluted mullions. The stairhall is panelled with a compartmented ceiling displaying decorative plasterwork detail. A broad dog-leg staircase incorporates turned balusters and decorative finialled newel posts, with columns in antis supporting the landing. A corniced angle fireplace occupies the stairhall. The main living spaces feature a lounge with a stone fire surround with carved overmantel and canopy, flanked by decorative multi-pane leaded glazing in casement windows. The dining room retains a carved timber fire surround with mirrored overmantel and panelled walls. A further large stone fireplace with herringbone-tiled surround is set back beneath a monumental braced timber-lintelled inglenook.

The ancillary building is a single-storey L-plan structure with crowstepped gables and modern glazing. The boundary walls are constructed of coped rubble, whilst the chamfered square-plan gatepiers are topped with capping stones bearing quatrefoil motifs.