Hill Of Burns, Creetown

The Hill of Burns is a late 18th-century house, with additions from the early 19th century and around 1900. The southwest elevation shows a two-storey, three-bay house of the late 18th century, with a projecting central bay that now has a modern porch. The walls are of rubble with raised sandstone angle details and window margins. The windows are single-light, sash and case with four panes to each window. It has an eaves cornice, end skewputts, tall coped stacks, and a graded slate roof.

The northeast elevation has a two-storey, wide three-bay granite ashlar section with a bull-faced basecourse. Steps lead to a projecting Roman-Doric tetrastyle porch with a mutule cornice, and a double-leaf door with a fanlight. The windows are single-light, sash and case with a 12-pane glazing pattern. The elevation has an eaves cornice and piended slate roofs. To the west, projecting three-window bows incorporate modern concrete balconies with simple metal balustrades and windows with 18-pane and 16-pane glazing. A harled two-storey wing, dating to circa 1900, fills the re-entrant angle to the north. To the southeast, the wing repeats the bowed-end motif of the earlier 19th-century section, with bipartite and single-light windows, sash and case, with multi-pane upper sashes and plate glass lower sashes. Deeply overhanging eaves, piended slate roofs and tall corniced stacks with octagonal cans are present. Slate flat-roofed dormers are on the south elevation.

The interior was largely refitted around 1900, and includes good carved chimneypieces from that period. Many first-floor rooms were subdivided during conversion to hotel usage to accommodate bathrooms. Delicate plaster details are found in the drawing room above the dado rail, along with architraves.

A sundial is located to the east. It is a lectern dial dated 1869, supported on a crocket capital on a clustered colonnette, featuring a lead dial and gnomon, and a plaque dedicated to ‘Dash’.