Burnfoot Hall Nursing Home (Formerly Rickerby School)

Burnfoot Hall Nursing Home, formerly Rickerby School, is a moderately large neo-Tudor country house designed by Walter Newall of Dumfries, built between 1830 and 1840. The building incorporates an existing house and features prominent main elevations with a mix of wide and narrow gables, hood-moulded mullioned and transomed windows, and shaped skews that run horizontally over skewputts, topped with spike finials. The exterior is constructed of red ashlar.

The south entrance elevation consists of five bays arranged symmetrically with varying planes. It includes a castellated gothic central bay, which may date from around 1820, flanked by wide gabled outer bays. The intermediate bays contain one with a porch and dormerheads. To the right, there is a deeply recessed service wing that is slightly lower and not visible from the approach, featuring an unusual gable finial shaped like an onion.

The long west elevation showcases a canted window in the advanced central gable, while a two-storey narrow square tower on the left rises above the main eaves level and has a steep pyramidal roof covered in fish-scale slates. The building has axial stacks with diamond flues, and all roofs are finished with graded slates. There are some late 19th-century additions to the north, which serve the courtyard.

The courtyard buildings, which include one with a lintel dated 1798, are mostly in a derelict state, with the stables listed separately.

Inside, the hall features elaborate late 19th-century details, including intricate plasterwork on the ceilings and cornices, as well as timber panelling. The spacious main stair hall, possibly contemporary with the castellated south-facing bay, includes a later lantern and a scale-and-platt stone staircase adorned with decorative cast-iron balusters. A three-light coloured glass window at roof level is topped with a Tudor-arched hood-mould.