Sundial, Woodside House, Arbroath

Woodside House, Arbroath, is a mid-19th century two-storey gabled villa that was substantially altered and enlarged between 1893 and 1896 by architect A A Symon of Forfar for Colin Grant. The most prominent addition is a large square-plan entrance tower of three stages projecting from the south-east front, along with single-storey service wings and a heating apparatus wing that create a U-plan form to the east.

The house is constructed with a rough-hewn rubble plinth, stugged and snecked ashlar with droved margins, and polished ashlar dressings. Windows are single and mullioned bipartite lights with simple architraves and traditional plate glass sash and case glazing. The roofing is slated with broad corniced ridge stacks and masonry skews, with gable apex finials and iron weathervanes to the rear and north elevation.

The south elevation was originally L-plan with a gabled bay to the left. The entrance sits in a re-entrant angle, now dominated by the three-stage entrance tower added in the 1890s and set off-centre. To its left is a set-back gabled bay with an advanced three-light parapetted window bay with rounded angles at ground floor, and two single-light windows at first floor breaking the eaves, each with very elaborate pedimented and finalled dormerheads. To the right of the tower are four window bays with paired openings to the left and a gabled two-window bay to the right with modern replacement glazing. A stringcourse runs between ground and first floors.

The entrance tower is the masterwork of the 1890s alterations. A stringcourse steps around inset panels with semi-circular pediments at first-floor level to east and west, and over the entrance to the south. The entrance doorpiece itself features narrow banded Scottish Renaissance style pilaster shafts and a pediment with inset cartouche and elaborate carving, flanked by an unusual pair of two-leaf panelled doors, each leaf containing six horizontally-placed panels. At the first and second stages, architraved bipartite windows sit above carved apron panels and corniced architraves. The tower is topped with a fine Jacobethan strapwork frieze, cornice and trefoil motif parapet, a slated ogee roof with oval oculus attic windows, and paired square-plan chimney stacks with leaded ogee caps and cast-iron weathervane finials attached at the east of the roof.

The west elevation forms a shallow U-plan, with gabled end bays flanking a centre section set back behind a ground-floor loggia that screens the library within. This loggia features a pair of tapered columns supporting an entablature and balustered parapet in front of a first-floor balcony. The gabled end bays have canted, parapetted three-light windows projecting at ground floor, with bipartites featuring shallow pediments at first floor. Between these, two further bipartites with very elaborate banded Flemish gablet-heads crowned with ball finials sit set back.

The elaborately sculptured pedimented dormerheads, strapwork, stepped string courses and architectural detail throughout employ a Scottish Renaissance idiom characteristic of the 1890s alterations period. Historic records show that architect Symon presented three alternative stylistic schemes for approval: simple Jacobethan, crowstepped Scottish Renaissance, and French-Jacobethan. As executed, elements of the latter two schemes are combined.

The interior retains important surviving features. A passageway runs across the full length of the south front at ground and first floors, with principal apartments at ground level and bedrooms at first floor. A smoking room occupies the second stage of the tower, representing the original arrangement. The interior follows a fine Jacobethan scheme throughout, with a variety of timber chimneypieces of which the most notable stands in the drawing room with a tall elaborate overmantel featuring open swannecked pediments. Decorated plasterwork ceilings, original window shutters and door furniture survive. The staircase is particularly distinctive, featuring a brass scroll balustrade and classical-style brass newel posts with a timber handrail. Notable figurative stained glass in Glasgow School style adorns the first-floor landing, incorporating heraldic arms of the Grants with decorative margin detailing.

The sundial to the south of the house is constructed in ashlar in a pedestal style, with an 18th-century classical acanthus-leafed lower section.

The house was subdivided into four flatted units in 1992. Architectural plans for the alterations, signed from 34 Castle Street, Forfar in 1893, showing the three proposed stylistic schemes, remain with one of the present owners. The Arbroath Herald of 22 August 1895 carried a description of the new Woodside House to be built on the site of the earlier house at Woodside. The Signal Tower Museum in Arbroath holds a casket and illuminated manuscript, both gifted to Colin Grant of Woodside in 1923 when he was made Burgess of the Burgh of Aberbrothock, with Woodside House depicted both on the casket and in a vignette on the manuscript.