Dunniface Farmhouse

Dunniface Farmhouse

A mid-19th-century farmhouse incorporating earlier fabric, with alterations to the steading by James Gillespie in 1854 and further work by James Gillespie and Scott in 1903, 1906 and 1908.

The farmhouse is a 2-storey, 3-bay T-plan gabled house built in squared and snecked rubble using Aberdeen Bond to the south and coursed rubble elsewhere, with dressed quoins, chamfered base course, corbels, hoodmould, chamfered reveals and stone mullions.

The south elevation is the entrance front. It features a deep-set panelled timber door with a 2-leaf fanlight at the centre, housed in a flat-roofed stone porch with hoodmould and parapet. Above this is an arrow-slit window at first floor and a rooflight positioned off centre to the right. To the right is a broad, advanced, finialled gable containing a bipartite window at ground level and a smaller bipartite window at first floor, with a blind arrow-slit in the gablehead. To the left of centre is a canted window at ground level with corbels, which gives way to a first-floor narrow, advanced and finialled gable with a bipartite window and blind arrow-slit in the gablehead.

The west elevation has a ground-floor window to the centre and another in a bay to the left. At first-floor level is a centre window with a pedimented windowhead breaking the eaves and a bipartite window to the left. An advanced gable rises to the right of centre, abutting a garden wall and adjoined by a projecting, battered chimney breast that pierces the gablehead.

The north elevation features a finialled gable with a blinded window to the left of centre at ground level. A slightly recessed single-storey wing adjoins at the left, with a squat wallhead stack at the centre, a window to the right and two windows to the left.

The east elevation is complex. An advanced and gabled porch projects to the right of centre with a flat-roofed extension behind. The porch has a door to the right and a window to the left, with a further door on the return to the left. An adjoining projecting single-storey wing to the outer right has two boarded timber doors. To the left is a 2-storey gable with a window at ground-floor right and an adjacent garden wall abutting to the left, beyond which sits a small flat-roofed extension with a timber door to the right and window to the left. At first-floor level is a window to the right and a further window at the gablehead centre.

Windows throughout are timber sash and case with 2, 4, 6, 9 and 12-pane glazing patterns. The roof is covered in graded grey slates. The chimney stacks are cavetto-coped with shouldered ashlar and a full complement of polygonal cans, whilst the ashlar-coped skews feature moulded skewputts and decorative finials and thackstanes.

The interior contains panelled shutters.

The steading comprises two rectangular-plan ranges running north to south, both covered in pantiles and built in rubble.

A stepped range to the north of the farmhouse has dressed quoins and margins. Its east elevation shows a lower bay to the left with a door to the left and a small window to the right, and a bay to the right with three cart arches below three timber-louvred hayloft openings. The interior has an open beamed ceiling and timber stair. A modern farm building adjoins at the outer right. The west elevation has a lower bay to the right with a small opening to the right, and a taller bay to the left with three similar small openings and three hayloft openings above. A brick gable of a modern farm building adjoins at the outer left.

An older range to the northwest of the farmhouse has a laigh floor to the west. Its east elevation (single storey) features a door to the right of centre with a further door above ground and breaking eaves to the left of centre. The south elevation (2 storey) has a door to the centre at ground level, a window above and an arrow-slit at the gablehead.

A piend-roofed random rubble outbuilding in U-plan form stands to the east of the farmhouse. It is pantiled to the north and east and slated to the south and west, with lower wings projecting from the southeast and northeast corners. The south elevation has a wide timber door to the left. The west elevation displays a doorway to the right and two large rooflights. The north elevation is blank with a long sloping roofline.

The property is enclosed by coped rubble and brick boundary walls with square coped ashlar gatepiers and decorative cast-iron gates.