The Cottage, Prestonmill, Kirkbean

The Cottage is a low, two-storey, symmetrical, three-bay vernacular cottage dating from the later 18th century, situated at the centre of the small rural settlement of Prestonmill on the A710 on the Southerness peninsula, approximately 14 miles south of Dumfries. It sits on sunken garden ground that slopes down to the east and to the Prestonmill Burn, adjacent to, and at a lower level than, the neighbouring 19th-century stone road bridge and mill lade.

The walls are built on rough foundations in traditional rubble stonework using unusually large field boulders with small pinnings, and all elevations are painted. The walls are notably thick, as revealed by the window reveals. Cast iron drainage grilles run around the base of the sunken west gable and part of the front wall.

The principal elevation is symmetrical. The first floor windows are small and square and sit immediately below the eaves. The ground floor windows and gable windows have been enlarged at some point. The windows are predominantly later 20th-century replacements: four-pane timber sash and case windows at ground floor level, and top-hung timber casements in the small first floor openings. The front entrance door is boarded timber with a drip canopy above.

The roof is covered in graded grey slate with stone skews and stone ridges. Each gable has a painted chimney stack with a cornice, thackstane and a pair of hexagonal clay chimney pots. The presence of thackstanes indicates the roof was previously thatched. The west gable chimney stack is rubble; the east gable stack is brick. The roofline is otherwise intact, with no later dormers or rooflights.

The interior was inspected in 2019. The ground floor plan largely appears to date from the 19th century. Ground floor rooms have exposed timber beams, and there are partly exposed rough-hewn timber roof trusses in the upper rooms. Wide board doors survive to the upstairs rooms. Most other internal fittings, including the staircase, are later 20th-century replacements.

To the rear of the house there is a later 20th-century brick kitchen addition built on the rubble foundations of a former outshot; this addition is excluded from the listing. Against the curved west retaining boundary wall, which rises in height towards the north, there is a small painted stone and brick outbuilding in an L-plan with a shallow mono-pitch roof. Adjacent to the northwest corner of the house is a small painted brick outbuilding with a corrugated sheet roof, which served as the former outside toilet. The detached flat-roofed garage within the west boundary is also excluded from the listing.

Prestonmill appears on Moll's map of 1745, where it is called 'Prestoun', and is named 'Preston Mill' on Thomson's map of 1832. The 1795 Statistical Account of Scotland records the settlement as part of the local Oswald Estate and notes that while 24 farmers had previously inhabited the village, only three and their cottages remained at that time. The Cottage is believed to have already been standing then, given its central position in the group and its construction and design characteristics. By 1834, the Church of Scotland Veto Rolls recorded ten families living in Prestonmill.

The Cottage first appears on the 1st Edition Ordnance Survey map, surveyed in 1851 and published in 1854, where it is marked as a post office. The Ordnance Survey Name Book of 1848–51 describes it as 'a small dwelling house in which is kept a post office — a runner goes daily to New Abbey and returns carrying the mails.' The map shows the cottage in its existing L-plan form, situated across the road from Prestonmill Cornmill and its mill pond, within a village that also contained a smithy, a farm steading and other dwellings.

The current listed building record, first written in 1971, noted that from 1845 the cottage was known as the Bourtree Inn. An article in the Dumfries and Galloway Standard of that year recorded a meeting of the Kirkbean Curling Club at the Bourtree Bush Inn. A further article in the same newspaper from 1866 referred to it as the Bourtree Inn, Preston Mill. The off-centre windows in each gable are consistent with the building's former use as a roadside inn, as 18th-century inns of this type commonly had small gable windows to allow views of approaching carriages.

The statutory listing covers The Cottage together with its boundary walls and outbuildings to the northwest. The flat-roofed addition at the rear and the detached garage are excluded from the listing. The listing was previously held under the name 'Prestonmill Village, Bridge House' at Category B; the statutory address, category, and listed building record were all revised in 2020 when the category was changed to C.