Dorward House, Dorward Road, Montrose

Dorward House is a large Italianate residential institution dating to 1838, designed by James Brewster. It features a three-storey, five-bay central block and four-storey towers, accompanied by extensive, symmetrical two-storey wings. The front elevations are constructed of stugged sandstone ashlar, while the rear elevations use squared and snecked stone. A deep rusticated base course and a ground floor cill band course are notable features.

The principal elevation’s entrance block has an oversized, pilastered, bracketed, and corniced doorpiece forming a porch, with a round-arch doorway and a keystone dated 1838. Above the doorway is a radiating fanlight with an opening central pane and two-leaf panelled doors. Stone-mullioned tripartite windows are present at the first and second floors, while the ground floor features round-arch windows, those on the first floor having deep bracketed hoodmoulds. Blocked round-arch tripartite windows are found at the fourth floor of the towers. Flanking the central block are symmetrical two-storey wings, each with a single bay containing a round-arch window at ground level and a projecting gabled section with paired windows; the first-floor windows in this section have round arches. A piended roof section terminates the elevation, set back, with paired round-arch windows at the first floor and a later flat-roofed ground floor addition below.

The north-facing return elevation of the left-hand gabled section has a door at the first floor, with a later ground floor addition and a steel fire escape below. To the right is a five-bay piended roof wing with a four-light canted window to the left at ground level. The west elevation is a mirror image of the east elevation, but without the fire escape.

The north elevation is asymmetrical, featuring a two-storey pitched roof section running east to west and forming part of the main central block. Piended roof wings extend to the right and left, forming a U-plan arrangement around the main block. Various gabled and piended, one and two-storey, projections and wings are set within this layout. A pitched roof single-storey, three-bay wing, located centrally with a canted projection on the gable end, extends to the north.

The building has timber sash and case windows with plate glass. A variety of grey slate roofs are present, with those on the front and principal blocks having deep overhanging eaves and painted timbers. Finials terminate the ridges of the piended sections. Corniced ashlar stacks with polygonal cans are found on the main block and at the wall heads of the piended wings to the east and west.

The interior has largely been reconfigured with mid- and late 20th-century arrangements.

Low, coped ashlar boundary walls are present to the south, terminating in capped square section piers, with four similar gatepiers and cast-iron gates aligned with the entrance front. Rubble stone walls with brick coping enclose the gardens to the north, east, and west.