Bara House

Bara House is a butterfly-plan house dating from 1940, designed by Reginald Fairlie and completed in later years. It is a two-storey and attic building with a service court to its north-east side. The house is harled with ashlar dressings and stone cill and lintel courses.

The north elevation, the main entrance front, features a slightly projecting, colonially gabled bay at its centre. This bay has a roll-moulded stone surround to the doorway, with the initials HJY and the date 1940 AM carved above the lintel. It is flanked by windows, with two further windows on the first floor and an oculus in the gable head. Flanking this central bay are oblique angles with irregular window openings, narrower at ground level. Advanced pavilion bays are positioned at the outer ends, each with a central window on each floor and a small attic window.

The south elevation has a tall, five-sided projecting centrepiece with a polygonal roof and large windows at ground floor level, and two narrower windows at the centre of the first floor. Flanking bays to the north have three windows to each floor to the right and left, with a doorway in the outer left bay and a taller window above. The outer left pavilion matches the southern pavilions. The pavilion on the right has a raised stack and lean-to service bays at ground level.

The service court is created by a single-storey passage wing linked to the south end of the east pavilion, and a piend-roofed garage to the outer north-east side. A quadrant wall to the entrance court closes off the service court to the west.

The windows are sash and case with a 12-pane glazing pattern. The roof is covered with grey slates, with ashlar coped stacks and a Russian finial to the polygonal piend on the south.

The interior consists of two-leaf doors and archways to the hall, otherwise presenting a plain design.

The garden walls are harled and have ashlar coped tops, forming a circular court at the front entrance, with urn finials. A gateway is centrally positioned with square section gatepiers, moulded caps, and acorn finials that flank decorative cast-iron gates. Further decorative wrought-iron pedestrian gates provide access to the garden. A coped rubble parapet runs along the entrance front at the north, punctuated by drum gatepiers.

The design of the house strongly follows the work of Edinburgh architects John Kinross and Robert Lorimer, representing a later example of the butterfly plan house style pioneered around the turn of the century. A gate lodge to the north, constructed of similar materials and at the same time, is not included within the current listing. The gardens were simply landscaped and adorned with appropriate ornaments.