Murroes House

Murroes House

A low 16th century square-plan tower house with a south range added around 1600, forming a two-storey rectangular-plan fortified house. The stair tower was raised and its conical roof restored in 1942. A single-storey addition was built on the south side in the 1960s. The building is constructed from rubble pink and buff sandstone with a stone slate roof.

Windows vary in style and include sash and case, casement, casement with fixed top-pane, and top-hopper varieties. Many feature multi-pane glazing with some containing bottle glass panes. Window architraves are moulded or chamfered. The building displays crowstepped gables with skewputts and crown finials. End and ridge coped stacks are fitted with thackstanes.

On the east elevation, the tower house sits at the right. A two-leaf door and a six-pane casement window at first-floor level with chamfered margins sit above a narrow gun loop. A later forestair on the right leads to a door with a roll-moulded doorcase and stone slab-roofed porch. A leaded window sits on the main wall plane to the outer right, also with an irregular-shaped gun loop beneath the cill. The larger circa 1600 range occupies the left side. A two-leaf entrance door with a fanlight (formed from a former chimneybreast) sits centrally, with a small rectangular opening to the left. Sash and case windows with moulded architraves flank this entrance, with six-pane and three-pane sashes on top and bottom respectively on the left, and nine-pane and three-pane on the right. Both windows feature stylised thistle motif security bars. Three first-floor windows with chamfered margins and cat-slide roofs breaking the eaves occupy the facade, with leaded diamond-pane glazing in the centre window, nine-pane glazing to the left, and six-pane to the right. Two multi-pane windows sit at first-floor level on the left return gable. A later 20th century single-storey bay at the far left has four 12-pane windows, with a window and French window on the left return gable and a piended slate roof.

The west elevation shows the tower house at the left with two top-hinged multi-pane windows at ground floor and a sash and case window with moulded architraves at first-floor level (nine panes at bottom, two at top). The circa 1600 range occupies the right, featuring a stair tower at the left with two shot-holes at ground floor, a casement window at first-floor level with moulded architraves, and a plain casement with a shot-hole at upper level, topped by a ball-finalled conical roof. An asymmetrical bay sits to the right with four ground-floor windows of differing sizes and varying glazing patterns, and a six-pane first-floor window that breaks the eaves with a cat-slide roof. A later 20th century addition at the far right includes a door and two multi-pane windows.

The north gable displays a small window and gun loop at ground floor, and a 12-pane window at first-floor level with a shouldered architrave and relieving arch.

Interior features include newel stairs entered unusually from a corbelled inner segment of the stair tower. Various ashlar chimneypieces are present, including one with sway in the former kitchen. Exposed beams survive in the hall and former kitchen (ground floor of the original tower, also known as Goblins Hall). The first-floor room above, possibly the laird's room, is lined with shutters and panelling salvaged from Fothringham House in Inverarity parish (designed by David Bryce in 1859 and demolished in 1953).

Boundary walls of rubble construction exist on the north, south, east and west sides. The wall at the northeast has an arrow slit and a blocked aperture. A rectangular-plan outbuilding sits at the northeast angle, likely contemporary with the original tower, built from rubble with a stone slate roof. It features two doors and a window on the inner elevation and gable, and a window on the outer elevation. A privy adjoins the building with a stone slab roof. A rubble-built larder with stone shelves and a slab roof adjoins the forestair to the original tower.