Balintore Castle

Balintore Castle is a Baronial mansion constructed between 1859 and 1860 by William Burn. The building is tall, with two main storeys, a full basement, and an attic. It has a relatively simple exterior appearance, a compact and almost square plan, and a lively roofline featuring crowstepped gables, Early French Renaissance scrolled dormerheads, fishscale slated conical roofs to the angle turrets topped with iron ball finials, and grouped square-shafted Jacobean chimney stacks. The external walls are constructed of stugged and squared red sandstone with polished ashlar dressings. Features include a plinth, string courses between floors, stepped strings at the upper level of the southwestern and southeastern turrets, and gargoyles. The windows are sash and case style with four panes.

The principal rooms are arranged around a central, two-storey saloon, accessed via a gallery passage on the first floor. The basement includes service areas, including a brick groin-vaulted servants' hall beneath the saloon, and the attic contains a female servants' bedroom above the saloon. The building utilizes iron beam construction. A single-storey, L-plan kitchen offices wing is attached to the north side. The castle occupies a prominent and picturesque site.

The west (entrance) elevation is asymmetrical, featuring a three-storey entrance tower on the left with an elaborate Jacobean doorpiece. This doorpiece has ringed shafts, a cable moulded cornice, an elaborate strapworked decorative panel above the door (the heraldic panel is now missing), and an oak door with eight panels in two leaves. The gable is flanked by corbelled angle turrets. The second bay is recessed, with a stair and parapet infilled at basement and ground floor levels. A four-storey and basement stair tower is located to the right, buttressed at ground level, with a three-storey angle turret corbelled from the second stage at the northeast. Bartizans top the upper stages, telescoping in circumference.

The south elevation is symmetrical, with three bays and slim, full-height circular angle towers (with a stair within the left turret). The centre bay features a projecting canted bay window, three-lights in number, corbelled on brackets at attic level. Plain bays are punctuated with scrolled dormerheaded windows.

The east elevation is four-bayed, symmetrical except for a distinctive three-light canted window projecting at first floor level to the left, corbelled from a large wall buttress, with a masonry roof rising through the second floor (an addition dating to approximately 1870).

The north elevation is largely hidden at ground level by the kitchen wing. This wing surrounds a kitchen court and was originally enclosed by a screen wall, now lost. The north elevation features crowstepped gables and a square-plan gazebo/turret with a steeply-pitched, bell-cast pyramidal roof and fishscale slates, originally terminating the screen wall at the northwest.

Internally, the principal rooms and saloon have compartmentalised Jacobean plaster ceilings, oak panelling and gallery screens in the saloon, four-panel shutters, and some simple marble chimneypieces, all of which were present in 1991.