Ancillary Building, Glenshira, 27 Boclair Road, Bearsden

Ancillary Building, Glenshira, 27 Boclair Road, Bearsden

This is a single-storey villa with attic and raised basement to the north, built in 1926 and sympathetically altered in 2001. It is a 4-bay gabled building with Arts and Crafts references, featuring steeply-pitched swept roofs and exceptional interior decoration with outstanding retention of figurative coloured glass. The exterior is harled with cement dressings, jettied gables with arrowslits, mock half-timbering, and stone mullions.

The south (entrance) elevation displays 3 dominant gabled bays to the right. The centre bay is broader and slightly set-back, with steps leading up to a full-width tiled canopy supported on polygonal outer columns. A set-back 2-leaf timber door is positioned to the left, with a large irregular tripartite window to the right. A small horizontally-aligned tripartite window sits in the gablehead above. The flanking gables each have a flat-roofed canted window and a further set-back bay with a bipartite window to the outer left.

The north (garden) elevation features reducing semicircular steps with flanking small bipartites and a sundial on a moulded panel dated 1927 to the outer right. These steps lead to a broad terrace. A broad French window sits at the centre beneath a swept roof, with a horizontal eyelid dormer above. Irregular flanking gables flank this: the gable to the left is tall and half-timbered with a canted window at ground level and a recessed French window above; the gable to the right is low with a bipartite window. A further gable to the left has a bipartite window below a square window in the gablehead, with lower bays to a service wing at the outer left.

The west elevation is gabled with a canted 6-light window under a polygonal roof, flanked by two diminutive square windows added in 2001.

The east elevation has a central bay containing a timber door, above which is a tooled panel dated 1926 with a tiny carved shield inscribed 'JSD'. A gabletted wallhead stack breaks the eaves at the left. A pitch-roofed wing projects to the right with a timber door and small bipartite window, with the ancillary building abutting at the outer right.

The building features largely leaded multi-pane glazing in casement windows. The roofing uses Rosemary tiles with terracotta finials. Ashlar-coped harled stacks support a full complement of cans. Swept overhanging eaves feature moulded skews and skewputts. Cast-iron downpipes with decorative rainwater hoppers complete the exterior detailing.

The interior contains an exceptionally fine decorative scheme featuring decorative plasterwork cornicing, architraved doors with some coloured glass panels, and timber fire surrounds with overmantels and original tiled slips. The panelled stairhall contains a winding timber staircase and an ingleneuk fireplace with panelled overmantel and coloured glass panels. An attic study features decoratively-astragalled glazing to display cupboards. There are 2 bathrooms with original fittings and fine ceramic tiles: one features panels depicting exotic birds and the other has borders with picture tiles including Dutch figures and boats.

Much fine coloured glass is distributed throughout the interior, including in the stairhall with coloured margins and heraldic devices; a sun room with butterflies and Mackintosh-style flowers; an attic bedroom over the main door with diminutive Dutch girl figures and tiny panels showing harbour lights; roundels depicting birds and ships; and interior panels depicting castles and windmills.

The ancillary building is rectangular-plan with harling and battered buttress-style angles supporting Voyseyesque overhanging swept eaves. A part-glazed boarded 2-leaf timber door under a tiled canopy and jettied gablehead with arrowslit faces south. A horizontally-aligned leaded multi-pane tripartite window faces east. A decorative cast-iron weathervane sits on the roof ridge. The interior walls are lined with glazed ceramic tiles with decorative margins.

Terrace walls are flat-coped rubble. Square-section red brick gatepiers with cement bases are capped by obelisk finials on ball feet.