Durie House

Durie House

Durie House is a classical mansion built in 1762, comprising three storeys and seven bays. The building sits on a low square-windowed raised basement, with a dominant centre bay crowned by an urn-finial and pediment bearing a heraldic design in the tympanum. The exterior is constructed in polished ashlar with rusticated quoins above the basement, a deep droved base course, and bold eaves cornice. A keystoned Venetian doorcase with pilastered and corniced outer lights forms the principal entrance, with architraved windows above the basement; those to the ground floor centre on the south and west elevations are pedimented.

The principal south elevation features a three-bay advanced centre section with a Venetian doorpiece containing a panelled timber door and decoratively-astragalled fanlight, flanked by basement windows. Above this are three tall windows to the piano nobile, the centre window having a semicircular pediment with flanking windows bearing triangular pediments, and three windows to the first floor beneath the pediment. The outer bays are regularly fenestrated and recessed.

The west elevation mirrors the south as three centre bays but substitutes a window for the door at basement level, without pediment, and includes two slate-hung dormer windows. A screen wall of the rear court adjoins to the outer left. The east elevation is regularly fenestrated across five bays, with a lower two-storey setback nineteenth-century wing to the outer right, featuring two windows to each floor and a crenellated wallhead, and single-storey offices adjoining to the outer right. The north elevation displays a full-height advanced pedimented bay to the centre with basement largely obscured by ancillaries and a timber staircase, topped by two windows to each floor above; a similar bay to the right has its ground floor window blocked; a bay to the left incorporates an advanced nineteenth-century wing.

Windows throughout are six- and twelve-pane glazing in timber sash and case patterns. The roof is covered in grey slates with a piend-and-platform form, and features coped ashlar stacks and ashlar-coped skews.

The interior contains decorative and plain plasterwork cornices, panelled timber shutters, dado rails, and chimneypieces, mostly dating to the 1820s. The entrance hall features a keystoned segmental-arched opening with fluted pilasters leading to a substantial square stone stair with serpentine balusters rising through the full height of the house. The piano nobile rooms feature coved angles; the southwest room is enriched with rococo garland plasterwork. The southeast dining room contains a black marble fireplace and timber dado. The library occupies the centre of the first floor and displays a deep-coved ceiling with a carved timber and gesso fire surround incorporating a marble lintel and slips, together with an iron grate and timber mesh-fronted bookcases to the east. A timber-balustered oval service stair serves the upper floors, and an attic room retains box beds.

The rear office court comprises single and two-storey rubble structures arranged around a courtyard. A pedimented bell-towered archway occupies the centre of the west screen wall, with flanking pedestrian entrances—one segmental-headed to the right, and one to the left bearing a swagged lintel carving removed from Melville House in Fife. The north range, now two-storeys, originally housed the bake-house, coach-house and stabling, which have since been converted to accommodation. The east range underwent late twentieth-century conversion, as did the entire office court project by France Smoor. A late nineteenth-century north wing features a crenellated parapet.

To the immediate east of the house stands a sundial, probably dating to the eighteenth century, comprising a stepped octagonal base, square plinth, raked shaft and square top.

To the southwest lies a rectangular-plan walled garden with flat-coped, brick-lined rubble walls, breached to the east.