Bute Fabrics, Barone Road, Rothesay, Bute

This is a late 18th and early 19th century former cotton works, later converted into an orphanage in the late 19th century, and subsequently used as offices. The building is located on Barone Road, Rothesay, on the Isle of Bute. It is a near-symmetrical design in a plain classical style. The main wing has 19 bays facing west, featuring a central pediment. To the left, a four-bay, pitched-roof section, and to the right, a single-bay, pitched-roof with attic addition. An 18-bay, two-storey-with-attic wing extends to the east, incorporating a full-height stair tower on the left side and a four-bay, single-storey-with-attic addition on the right.

The whitewashed exterior walls are rendered in harl, with painted surrounds to the windows and doors. Moulded eaves run along the building, and gable-headed attic windows are present.

The west-facing entrance elevation has stairs leading to a central entrance with a replacement multi-paned door. Single windows are positioned on the ground floor, eleven bays to the right of the centre and seven bays to the left. Basement windows are irregularly placed. Attic windows are present in three bays on the outer left, two offset to the right of centre, and a single window on the outer right.

The east-facing rear elevation features exterior steel stairs giving access to an attic entrance, offset to the right of centre. A replacement glazed timber door is located on the first floor in the bay furthest to the right. The remaining bays exhibit a near-symmetrical arrangement of openings on both ground and first floors, with nine irregularly disposed attic windows. A single-storey addition to the outer right includes single windows in the two outermost bays, and boarded timber doors in the bays to the right and penultimate left. A full-height bowed stair tower has an entrance on the ground floor, with a single opening above, and stair windows on both the ground and first floors within the re-entrant angle.

The windows are predominantly 12-pane timber sash and case windows. The roof is covered in graded grey slate, with raised stone skews. A corniced sandstone apex stack is located to the south, and a corniced sandstone ridge stack is offset to the right of centre. Various circular cans are visible on the roof.

The interior was not inspected in 1996.

Coped random rubble boundary walls run along Barone Road, with harled, square-plan, panelled gatepiers flanking the entrance. Curved, harled linking walls connect the gatepiers.