Gables Hotel, Annan Road, Gretna

The Gables Hotel on Annan Road, Gretna, is a brick-built neo-classical villa designed by Raymond Unwin with C M Crickmer as site architect, built in 1917. The building comprises a central house of two storeys and five bays, flanked by forward-set wings. The main house features shallow segmental-arched ground floor windows, a shallow stepped forward central bay, and a moulded doorway with flat canopied hood. Multi-paned sash windows punctuate the elevation, with top storey windows set close to the roof line beneath broad-eaved piended slate roofs. End stacks rise prominently from the main house, while the flanking wings each have two bays to their front with axial stacks. The building is constructed of red brick with decorative contrasting brick detailing around the windows—an unusual residential material in Scotland. A later extension extends to the rear, and solar panels have been added. The building maintains a symmetrical composition with prominent tall chimney stacks that make a significant contribution to Gretna's streetscape.

The house was originally the doctor's residence when Gretna was first established. Gretna was purpose-built between 1916 and 1918 to house workers of a nearby munitions factory that stretched for nine miles along the Solway banks, producing Cordite explosives for the First World War. The township was designed along Garden City principles, with houses set back from the pavement into private gardens, wide central streets accommodating shops and community facilities, and curving subsidiary streets. Raymond Unwin, one of the most important figures in early twentieth-century British town planning, oversaw the scheme; he was best known for his work at Letchworth Garden City and Hampstead Garden Suburb. C M Crickmer, a London-based architect born in 1879 and working until 1971, served as resident architect and had previously collaborated with Unwin on both those earlier schemes. The township included churches, a dance hall, school, and cinema to serve workers and their families, but was largely dismantled after the war, with only scattered remnants surviving.