Coach House, Stronvaar, Kilkerran Road, Campbeltown

Coach House, Stronvaar, Kilkerran Road, Campbeltown

An early 19th-century house with later 19th-century remodelling, arranged as a two-storey structure over a raised basement. The building presents a five-bay symmetrical classical design of rectangular plan, flanked by pavilions in Palladian arrangement. The principal front is finished in painted ashlar, while the sides and rear are roughcast with polished ashlar dressings. The facade incorporates a base course, band course below the principal floor, a cill course at principal floor level (principal front only), band course, cornice and blocking course at eaves. Raised margins frame the corners and windows, with projecting cills at the side and rear elevations.

The northwest (principal) front features projecting cills and a smaller window at basement level, centring beneath a sandstone ashlar stair. An oversailing basement recess with nosings and decorative cast-iron railings provides access to a slightly recessed centre bay. Behind this sits a distyle screen of Tuscan columns and pilasters flush with the first floor, with an architrave and cornice above. The central entrance comprises a 4-panel door with an 8-pane fanlight and 8-pane timber sash and case sidelights. A venetian window lights the first floor, with a raised wallhead above. Principal floor windows are architraved and corniced with scrolled brackets, while the flanking first-floor windows are architraved with lugged cills.

The northeast elevation contains windows to the principal floor at the outer left and first floor to the right of centre. The southeast elevation has principal floor windows at the outer left (square) and right, with a first-floor window to the left of centre. The southwest (rear) elevation has a modern conservatory at the centre, built on an existing roughcast base with ashlar dressings at the corners, surmounted by a tall stair window. Blank bays occupy the outer left and right of the principal floor, with narrow windows at second-floor level above.

Most window openings contain 12-pane timber sash and case windows, with a 24-pane stair window and 4-pane and plate-glass windows at the outer left and right rear second-floor windows respectively. The roof is grey slate with a piended design comprising two valleys running at right angles to the rear from the main pitch over the principal front. Paired ashlar stacks rise to the principal ridge and occupy the valleys to the rear, finished with octagonal and circular cans.

The interior retains many original fittings, including panelled shutters, 6-panel doors, black and white marble chimneypieces in the dining and drawing rooms respectively, and ornate plaster cornices with ceiling roses. A 2-leaf, 6-panel inner entrance door, architraved with 8-pane sidelights, provides interior access.

Connected outbuildings include single-storey structures over basements flanking the principal front, with band course, cornice and blocking course stepped at the centre, and margined doorways (infilled at left). Flanking segmental carriage archways rise from these, with the right-hand arch within the garden of Courthill (listed separately). The left archway is margined with pilasters framing a frieze, cornice and blocking course, finished with terminal dies and stepped at centre. An L-plan single-storey stable block and carriage house to the rear is constructed of random rubble with margins and a piended grey slate roof, topped with ashlar wallhead stacks with octagonal cans. A single-storey gabled structure built into the north-side wall features a central door with flanking bipartite window, a modern tile roof, and an apex stack with octagonal can.

The boundary treatment includes ashlar cope around stone flagged areas to front and rear, dressed with wrought-iron railings and finials. A random rubble boundary wall along Kilkerran Road is capped with ashlar cope. A rendered and coped gatepier remains, with a single leaf of wrought-iron gates surviving.