Ballencrieff House

Ballencrieff House is a ruined shell of a mansion, burnt out in 1868 and subsequently abandoned. The building demonstrates construction across multiple periods, with additions dating to the late 17th and early 18th centuries. These additions created a double-pile plan, and a symmetrical north front was rendered, featuring a tripartite facade with recessed ends. The surviving left end remains gabled. At the heart of the house is a long rectangular tower, which exhibits a 1625 dormer head on its exposed south face. The tower stands three stories high, including a vaulted basement, with openings disposed in a roughly regular pattern. A kitchen fireplace gable is asymmetrically placed on the plan. The south front was extended by a narrower but slightly taller wing to the east; the tower's gables are crow-stepped, and the wing’s gable is skew-ended. A former 18th-century Venetian window once occupied the first floor of this wing, of which only the soffit arch remains. The exterior is constructed of rubble with ashlar dressings, including window and chimney margins and cornices, with some areas of brickwork.

A walled garden lies to the west, also constructed from rubble and ashlar. A two-story, four-bay west pavilion, likely dating to circa 1730, survives; it originally served as a laundry and is now a farmhouse. The pavilion is white harled with ashlar dressings, plate glass sash windows, a grey-slated roof with swept eaves, a central ridge, and two wallhead stacks.

A nearby stone, bearing a possible date of 1596, might indicate work done on the tower around that time. Oral tradition attributes the original tower's construction to John Murray, 1st Lord Elibank. Historically, Ballencrieff was “the most extensive barony in the parish,” as recorded in the Old Statistical Account. There is a description noting that the north entrance elevation previously comprised a five-bay, advanced section with cornicing and a pediment, flanked by gabled wings and connected to the main house by screen walls, with four-bay pavilions.