Drumadoon Private Nursing Home, 17 Colquhoun Street Upper, Helensburgh

Drumadoon Private Nursing Home, 17 Colquhoun Street Upper, Helensburgh

A Grade A listed building designed by William Leiper between 1901 and 1903, this is a 2-storey and attic villa of L-plan form, executed in the Scottish Arts and Crafts style.

The main structure combines snecked red sandstone to the ground floor with harled upper storeys featuring half-timbering details. The north face is predominantly ashlar with polished ashlar dressings throughout. A base course runs at ground level, corbelled at first-floor level with a roll-moulded string course. Swept eaves and bargeboarded gables characterise the roofline, while window reveals are chamfered with half-roll moulding. Mullioned and transomed windows feature stone mullions at ground-floor level and wooden mullions above. The roof is red tiled with tall corniced ashlar chimney stacks. Original rainwater goods remain.

The north entrance elevation displays 5 asymmetrical bays with a 3-storey wing advanced to the right and a lower service wing abutting to the north. To the left, 2 slightly advanced bays frame a small bipartite window at ground level. The principal feature is a fine ashlar doorcase comprising a depressed-arched entrance with a crocketted ogee arch above, topped by a foliated boss interrupting the cornice and flanked by short columns. The column capitals are surmounted by animals, and figurative impost corbels in high relief support the columns. The half-glazed panelled door is set deep with a roll-moulded architrave, and a bipartite window sits above. To the right, 2 recessed bays include a corbelled turret at first-floor level above a squinch, sheltering a hanging bell and rising to a polygonal roof via a circular turret corbelled above a narrow light. An advanced wing with a full-height canted bay in the re-entrant angle features a tall corniced parapet and a 3-light mullioned and double-transomed hall window at first floor.

The east (street) elevation comprises 3 asymmetrical bays with a narrow light to the centre, a tripartite window at ground and first floors to the right, and a curved angle expressed at a tower to the outer left southeast. A tripartite mullioned and transomed window at ground floor is surmounted by 3 windows above.

The south (garden) elevation displays 5 asymmetrical bays. A taller 3-storey gabled bay to the centre features canted windows at ground and first-floor levels arranged 2-3-2 at ground and 1-4-1 at first floor, corbelled to a square above with 2-5-2 window arrangement and half-timber detail. A recessed gabled bay to the right, incorporating half-timber detailing to its apex, has tripartite windows at ground, first, and second floors, with a relieving arch to the ground-floor window. Recessed bays to the left include a taller ashlar gabled bay to the outer left, topped by 3 polygonal corniced stacks, with narrow lights (inglenooks) to the ground and first floors to the right and a carved panel above at centre. A recessed bay penultimate to the left incorporates a half-glazed door flanked by windows set in a depressed-arch recess at ground floor, above which sits a half-timber balcony with a timber post to the centre and braces to the angles, containing a tripartite door and window arrangement. A bipartite piended and finialled dormer crowns this section.

The west elevation comprises 4 asymmetrical bays. A broad canted bay off-centre right features 2-3-2 mullioned and transomed windows at ground floor and 1-2-1 at first floor, beneath a gambrel roof with a bipartite window to the gablehead. Two narrow lights occupy ground and first-floor levels to the outer right. Two lower bays to the left include a tripartite window at ground and first floor to the outer left and a single window at ground with a bipartite window above to the right.

A service wing comprises a single-storey and attic link to a half-timber pavilion to the north, formerly housing a billiard room, supported on ashlar posts with roll-moulded corbels to the east (partly infilled by rubble wall) and rubble at ground level to the west. A single-storey piended block abuts the northwest, with a gambrel roof to the pavilion.

Windows are predominantly leaded casements, with decorated patterning to the leaded lights in the upper section of the ground-floor canted window to the west.

The interior retains fine original decoration. A hall on an east-west axis to the north side features timber wainscot panelling and beams, with a balustered timber screen to a dog-leg stair. The drawing room is lined with timber panelling and contains a wide segmental-arched inglenook recess. The dining room also features an inglenook.

Square red sandstone ashlar gatepiers with rounded angles and saw-tooth ashlar caps flank stepped snecked rubble walls finished with semi-circular coping.

A garden pavilion stands as a single-storey square-plan structure of boarded timber with open-timber work depressed-arch and balustrade on its south face, covered by a fishscale felt-tiled pagoda-style roof.