Crossway House, Torthorwald

Crossway House is a two-storey, three-bay gabled house dating from the 18th to 19th century. It features a central triangular wall-head pediment and a corniced doorway, and is prominently located on the bend in the A709 near Torthorwald Castle in Dumfries. The house is constructed of rubble, with squared and stugged stone at the second storey, and has ashlar dressings. It is whitewashed and includes a single-storey outshot with a gable wall-head stack and a pitched slate roof, attached to the rear (south) elevation. Additionally, there is a later flat-roofed sunroom addition at the back.

The windows are mainly timber sash and case windows with a 12-pane glazing pattern. The roof features straight skews, end chimney stacks with clay cans, and is covered with grey slate. The house is situated within a large triangular garden plot, and a small section of low boundary wall with castellated coping fronts the A709.

Historically, the village of Torthorwald lies on the main road between Dumfries and Lochmaben. A single-storey building on the site of Crossway House may have been part of the parish school in the 18th century. This building was raised to two storeys in the early to mid-19th century to serve as lodgings for the adjoining school, known as the 'Torthorwald Classical and Commercial Boarding Academy'. A newspaper article from 1850 described the boarding school as 'spacious and stately'. The building is depicted as a school on the 1st Edition Ordnance Survey map (surveyed 1856) through to the 3rd Edition (revised 1947). When the adjoining schoolroom was demolished, materials from that building may have been used to extend the single-storey outshot at the rear of Crossway House.