Sundial, Nunraw House

Sundial

This 17th-century polyhedron sundial sits on a cubic pedestal with an octagonal base. The stone dial features cupped dials on four faces of the polyhedron, together with small dials calibrated for distant places including Cairo, Jerusalem, and Philadelphia.

The sundial stands within the grounds of Nunraw House, a complex building that incorporates a mid to later 15th-century keep at its south-east corner. The keep is of square plan with a cap house, constructed in red sandstone rubble. It retains an arrow slit to the north and billetting to its parapet walk with rope moulding below at the angles and rainwater spouts.

The 15th-century keep was later incorporated into a Baronial mansion designed by Brown and Wardrop in 1863–1864, with further late 19th-century additions. The later work is rendered in stugged ashlar and partially follows the Z-plan of a former late 16th-century castle, imitating the character of the 15th-century work. A Georgian stable court lies to the east. The mansion's north elevation features a squat porte cochere of the 1880s with round-arched entrances and heraldic carvings above the archways. Additional towers with cap houses and a conical-roofed stair tower occupy the corners and angles of the building. The west elevation includes a corbelled canted balcony known as "the pulpit" set against a second-storey window. The south elevation is distinguished by a sturdy consoled balustraded balcony with a small canopied niche above. Gun loops pierce the 19th-century work at intervals. The building displays crowstepped gables and billet-moulded coping to gable-end stacks, with slate roofs throughout and a pierced ashlar parapet to the north front.

The interior contains fine oak work of circa 1860, including linenfold panelling and geometrically panelled doors. The hall is laid with stone flagging and has a timber balustrade at the foot of a stone dog-leg stair. Notable chimneypieces survive: one with a stone hood, one in marble with Ionic pilasters, and one in timber with composite pilasters, a billeted mantelpiece, and ornate cast-iron grate. The 15th-century tower features a barrel vault. Stone newel stairs occupy the towers.

The building originally contained a painted ceiling dating between 1603 and 1617, executed in tempera on board and beams. Discovered during the 1863 renovation, it was partly re-sited in the Chapel and partly removed to the Museum of Antiquities. The work is initialled PHC (Patrick Hepburn and Helen Cockburn) and is adorned with heraldry, monarchal arms, musical instruments, exotic animals, and guilloched ribbons on the beams. The white ground has largely disappeared, but much red and yellow detailing survives alongside black line drawing.

The 15th-century keep closely resembles Huntingtower in Perthshire and Affleck Castle in Angus. The property passed from the Hepburn family to the Hays and subsequently to Walter Wingate Gray, a Glasgow merchant, in the later 19th century. In 1946, Cistercian monks arrived and established Sancta Maria Abbey to the south-west, with the house serving thereafter as a Retreat. The late 19th-century work may be attributed to Shiells and Thomson, architects responsible for the nearby Baronial house of Linplum. The painted ceiling shares similar line drawing technique with that at Sparrow Castle, Cockburnspath. A lime tree avenue leads to the Abbey. The lodge and dovecot are listed separately.