19 Carriden Brae, Muirhouses, Bo'Ness

18 Carriden Brae in Muirhouses, Bo'Ness, is a pair of single-storey and attic cottages built in 1873, designed in an L-plan style typical of cottage orné. The cottages are primarily constructed from squared and snecked tooled sandstone, featuring overhanging eaves and droved chamfered window and door openings.

On the west elevation, which is the principal elevation, No 18 has a gabled porch in the low wing to the left, displaying a datestone from 1873, with four bays to the right. The south elevation shows a half-hipped two-bay end gable for No 18 on the left, while the right side has two recessed bays and an additional low recessed wing with an entrance door for No 19. The north elevation of No 19 features four bays with a low recessed wing that contains a lavatory, outhouse, coal cellar, and a doorway leading to the garden.

No 18 has modern replacement lattice-effect glazing, while No 19 retains its original leaded lattice glazing, except for the south elevation where the window to the right of the end gable has been altered. No 19 also has the only surviving blind lattice window, which was once common to all cottages. The entrance door to No 18 is modern, while No 19 features an original plain timber boarded door on the south elevation. The cottages are topped with graded grey slates, and there is a gable end stack on the north and a ridge stack at the junction between the two cottages.

Inside, No 18 has been modernised, whereas No 19 is exceptionally well-preserved and is considered the best of the Muirhouses cottages. The original floor plan remains intact. The entrance door on the south elevation opens into a flagged passageway, with the entrance to the cottage on the left, access to the garden straight ahead, and the coal cellar on the right. There is a simple timber door with a latch leading into the cottage. The passageway continues to a scullery (now a kitchen), a narrow pantry (now a lavatory), and a further room opposite with a four-panel door, leading to the kitchen at the end (now a sitting room with the original range replaced by a gas fire). The kitchen contains two bed recesses and original shutters, with doors made of simple boarded timber.

The boundary walls to the west feature coping stones topped with a timber fence above.